Keep the Picture, Throw Out the Frame

Once again, progressives are letting conservatives frame the discussion around an important issue. By doing so they are losing the chance at making real reform in an important area of civil rights and in an area that caused no end of problems in the last presidential election. That issue? Voting rights; in particular re-enfranchising felons after their sentences are complete.

In this morning's Wall Street Journal (subscription), Democrats show their continued hesitancy to take the initiative and frame this campaign issue:

Nevertheless, leading Democrats have approached the question of felons' voting rights gingerly. Their dilemma: While talking up the issue would reap votes and goodwill in some African-American communities, which are disproportionately affected by voting restrictions, it also could prompt Republican attacks.

"The Democrats are scared to death of being accused of being soft on crime," says Marc Mauer, assistant director of the Sentencing Project, a Washington group that works on prison issues. Nonetheless, he says, the voting-rights issue "seems like a golden opportunity for [Democrats] and they should jump on it."

Left unsaid in the article - this is still the Wall Street Journal - is that far from being soft on crime, this issue is about being strong on voting rights, strong on civil rights. Restoring the right to vote to felons who have completed their sentences does nothing to shorten or soften their terms in prison or on probation. What it does do is return some measure of a sense of belonging to their community to these ex-felons.

Nearly as bad as the idea that felons should be permanently disenfranchised is the way that lists of those ineligible to vote are maintained. Remember Florida?

Much of the controversy surrounding felons' voting rights involves purge lists. Problems with the lists have emerged most dramatically -- and repeatedly -- in Florida. The state, which bars felons from voting unless they win clemency through a personal appeal to the governor, first restricted felons' voting rights in 1868 by adopting a constitution that critics say discriminates against African-Americans. Today, one in three black men in Florida can't vote because of the restrictions.

Florida's purge list, and a host of other voting problems, became after the 2000 election, when George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes. A lawsuit by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People questioned the validity of 90,000 names on the list. People who shared names or addresses with convicted felons ended up on list. And some former prisoners were included even though their voting rights had been restored.

This year's purge list, which the state was forced to release after being sued by the media, also had problems. More than 2,000 of the 48,000 names on the list were legitimate voters, activists say. Also, because of problems with the databases used, only a few dozen Hispanic felons were on the purge list, compared with many thousands of African-Americans. That ignited racial and political tensions because many Hispanics in Florida tend to vote Republican and African-Americans usually support Democrats. In mid-July, the state threw the list out.

The progressive ideas of redemption and rehabilitation have fallen completely from the national discourse because of this constant attack by conservatives on anyone who promotes them. And because progressives, Democrats, will not stand up to the attacks and frame the issue in any meaningful way.