ntil the official Massachusetts voter information booklets began arriving in the mail last week, many people were unaware that Massachusetts allows convicted felons to vote from their prison cells. This November, voters will finally have the opportunity to change the law that allows imprisoned lawbreakers to elect our lawmakers.
Question 2 on the ballot asks whether the state Constitution should be amended to prevent convicted felons from voting while they are serving time in prison. Currently, all inmates may vote by absentee ballot in the town in which they resided prior to their incarceration. The amendment, which is backed by Governor Cellucci, would prohibit criminals from voting only while in prison - voting privileges would be restored once a felon served his time.
Question 2 is not a radical, or even novel, proposal: Every state but three imposes some type of ban on voting by those convicted of serious crimes. Most states bar voting by felons while in prison, but restore the right to vote once the individual has served his sentence or completed parole. In 14 states, a felony conviction can mean a permanent ban on voting. But only Massachusetts, Vermont, and Maine impose no restrictions on the voting rights of felons - allowing convicted rapists, murderers, and gun dealers to vote forever from their prison cells.
Preventing hard-core criminals from voting from jail probably seems like a no-brainer. After all, convicted criminals forfeit many rights as a matter of course - most important of all, their liberty. Indeed, most people probably take for granted that imprisonment for serious crimes means, at a minimum, removal from civic life.
Nevertheless, a number of civil rights organizations have taken up the cause of voting by inmates, arguing that the Massachusetts ballot measure is racially discriminatory. A large number of the felons in Massachusetts prisons are minorities. So, the argument goes, taking the vote away from incarcerated felons will dilute the political power of minority communities. (Of course, preventing prisoners from voting also negatively impacts another constituency - men. But, don't hold your breath waiting for activists to complain about this ''discriminatory'' impact.)
In the states that already prohibit voting by felons, civil rights activists - unable to win voting privileges for inmates at the ballot box - have taken their claims of discrimination to the courts. In 1994, the legal clinic at the Yale Law School brought suit against the state of New York on behalf of nine black inmates who were unable to vote in New York City's mayoral election for David Dinkins. The Yalies argued that, by preventing inmates from voting, New York deprived minorities of their full electoral power in violation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The federal court correctly dismissed that case, but, last week, another group filed a similar federal lawsuit challenging Florida's ban on voting by felons.
Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation and a supporter of prohibitions on voting by felons, takes issue with such lawsuits. ''The only people these laws discriminate against are convicted criminals,'' says Rushford.
State Representative Francis L. Marini, the primary sponsor of the Massachusetts ballot question, agrees. ''If our criminal justice system is disproportionately affecting a particular group of people,'' he says, ''then that is indicative of a much larger problem.'' The way to address the problem of large numbers of minorities in prison, suggests Marini, is not to allow criminals to continue voting from jail, but rather, to craft a public policy that will discourage all people from committing serious crimes in the first instance.
Of course, the idea that average minorities share a community of interests with incarcerated felons who may have the same skin color is insulting, at best. At worst, it is racist.
Moreover, racial demagoguery by civil rights activists obscures the fact that allowing Massachusetts inmates to vote by absentee ballot actually dilutes the voting power of law-abiding minorities who reside in high-crime areas. But, then, these activists are often more concerned with the rights of minority lawbreakers than they are with the rights of the minority communities victimized by crime.
Those who break our laws should not have a voice in electing those who make and enforce our laws. A Yes vote on Question 2 is a vote for common sense.
Jennifer C. Braceras is an attorney and research fellow at Harvard Law School. Her column appears regularly in the Globe.
