Working for ex-prisoners’ voting rights

In January and February of this year, the Diocesan Councils of all three Episcopal dioceses in Virginia will vote on resolutions supporting the restoration of voting rights to ex-felons in the state.

In 37 states, voting rights are automatically restored when convicts complete their sentences and parole requirements, explains Vaughn Wilson, a former prison minister in Virginia who began working on the issue after reading about it in a local newspaper. In Virginia, voting rights can only be restored after a lengthy and complex process which includes case-by-case approval from the governor and which the majority of ex-prisoners find too daunting to pursue.

"Essentially, in Virginia, you’re paying for your felony the rest of your life," Wilson says. "Voting rights are such a basic right of American citizenry, they shouldn’t be taken away forever."

One of the effects of the current law is to bar 25 percent of all black men in Virginia from voting – a statistic that prompted Baptist pastor Jake Manley to liken it to the poll tax (Virginia Pilot, 9/10/01). Other religious groups in the state – including the Roman Catholic, United Methodist and some Baptist Churches – have already spoken out in favor of voting rights restoration.

"I think the general public is still of the mind to ‘lock-’em-up and throw away the key,’" Wilson says. "We have gone on a big prison-building program in the last several years. They have taken away parole in Virginia and cut out a lot of rehabilitative services in prisons. But everyone I’ve met in the jail or prison ministry area says this is long overdue, to allow people to regain their voting rights after having paid their debt to society."

– Marianne Arbogast