he 3.8 million registered voters in Massachusetts will be asked on Nov. 7 to amend the state Constitution to prohibit incarcerated felons from voting.
The proposal is mean-spirited and goes against all the best thinking of authorities on corrections.
This proposal should remind us of the incredible fact that there are 3.9 million Americans who cannot vote because they were or are prisoners. Of that figure 1.4 million are African-American males.
The laws of 47 states impose disenfranchisement for all prisoners and former prisoners. Only Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont impose no restrictions on inmates or former inmates.
Disenfranchisement laws in the United States are a vestige of medieval times when offenders were banished or suffered ''civil death.'' Laws in Southern states banning former prisoners from voting were enacted in the late 1800s amid clear signs of racism. In the literature about America's shameful exclusion of almost 4 million citizens from the ballot box there is virtually no one who offers any rational justification for this anomaly almost unknown in any other nation. The practice clearly does not promote the reintegration of the offender into society. The denial of the vote to ex-convicts goes against all trends in the past century that extended the vote to women, blacks, and 18-year-olds.
The denial of the right to vote to former prisoners shares the dark history of literacy tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses. The goal of universal suffrage has been central to America for well over a century.
One would think that denying the vote to any former convict is illegal. But the 14th Amendment provides that states may exclude citizens from voting ''for participation in rebellion, or other crime.''
In 1974, the US Supreme Court used the words ''or other crime'' to allow disenfranchisement. The argument that the words ''or other crime'' obviously relate to some form of rebellion did not sway the court.
States that strip away the right to vote from former felons try to justify their practice by asserting that former prisoners can regain the vote by petition.
That promise is largely illusory. In Virginia, for example, in 1996 and 1997 only 404 former prisoners had the right to vote reinstated - out of 200,000 ex-convicts in Virginia. The number of the disenfranchised who even apply is very small; they do not want to even admit their permanent punishment.
A recent excellent study, ''Losing the Vote,'' issued by the Human Rights Watch pointed out the unfairness of stigmatizing ex-prisoners as individuals unworthy of the vote and incapable of exercising it responsibly. A strong argument against penalizing prisoners by withholding the vote is the overwhelming impact which the practice has on African-American men.
The 1.4 million black men who are disenfranchised represent 13 percent of the American male population. This figure will continue or increase since over 50 percent of America's prisoners are black. It is clear that Congress could add a provision to the Voting Rights Act guaranteeing all ex-convicts the right to vote in federal elections. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which the United States is a party also offers persuasive evidence that disenfranchisement violates international law.
On Nov. 7, the voters of Massachusetts could reject the antiprisoner amendment and proudly proclaim that the Commonwealth will continue to allow prisoners to vote.
There are a number of political anachronisms in the United States. Excluding former prisoners from the ballot box is surely one of them. One of its worst consequences is that on election day every seventh African-American man is by law ineligible to vote.
The Rev. Robert F. Drinan, S.J., is a professor of law at Georgetown University.
