As of 2011, only two states, Kentucky and Virginia, continue to impose a lifelong denial of the right to vote to all citizens with a felony record, absent some extraordinary intervention by the
Governor or
state legislature.[SUP]
[3][/SUP] However, in Kentucky, a felon's rights can now be restored after the completion of a restoration process to regain civil rights.[SUP]
[3][/SUP] In 2007,
Florida moved to restore voting rights to convicted felons. In March 2011, however, Republican Governor Rick Scott reversed the 2007 reforms, making
Florida the state with the most punitive law in terms of disenfranchising citizens with past felony convictions.[SUP]
[4][/SUP] In July 2005, Democratic Iowa Governor
Tom Vilsack issued an executive order restoring the right to vote for all persons who have completed supervision.[SUP]
[3][/SUP] On October 31, 2005, Iowa's Supreme Court upheld mass re-enfranchisement of ex-convicts. Nine other states disenfranchise felons for various lengths of time following their conviction. Except Maine and Vermont, every state prohibits felons from voting while in prison.[SUP]
[3][/SUP]
Unlike most other laws that burden the right of citizens to
vote based on some form of social status, felony disenfranchisement laws have been held to be
constitutional. In
Richardson v. Ramirez, the
United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of felon disenfranchisement statutes, finding that the practice did not deny equal protection to disenfranchised voters. The Court looked to Section 2 of the
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which proclaims that States which deny the vote to male citizens, except on the basis of "participation of rebellion, or other crime", will suffer a reduction in representation. Based on this language, the Court found that this amounted to an "affirmative sanction" of the practice of felon disenfranchisement, and the 14th Amendment could not prohibit in one section that which is expressly authorized in another. However, many critics argue that Section 2 of the 14th Amendment merely allows, but does not represent an endorsement of, felony disenfranchisement statutes as constitutional in light of the equal protection clause and is limited only to the issue of reduced representation. The Court did rule, however, in
Hunter v. Underwood 471 U.S. 222, 232 (1985) that a state's felony disenfranchisement provision will violate Equal Protection if it can be demonstrated that the provision, as enacted, had "both [an] impermissible racial motivation and racially discriminatory impact." A felony disenfranchisement law, which on its face is indiscriminate in nature, cannot be invalidated by the Supreme Court unless its enforcement is proven to racially discriminate and to have been enacted with racially discriminatory
animus.
Currently, over 5.3 million people in the United States are denied the right to vote because of felony disenfranchisement.[SUP]
[5][/SUP]