UA Vote Everywhere, UA League of Women Voters and UA NAACP hosted Dori Miles, a licensed attorney and volunteer with Return My Vote, in ten Hoor Hall on Wednesday to discuss felony disenfranchisement, the denial of voting rights to those with felony convictions.
Return My Vote, a nonprofit, assists Alabama citizens with felony convictions in restoring their right to vote.
“I believe that this is one of the last remaining pieces where you see voter suppression alive and happening,” Miles said of Alabama.
Miles said that when the U.S. was founded, voting rights were limited to white male property owners, which, at the time, made up just 6% of the voting-age population. She said that while progress has been made since then, felony disenfranchisement still remains a barrier for voting rights in various states.
“The nonprofit that Dr. Fording and I started several years ago really hopes to end felony disenfranchisement, certainly in Alabama,” Miles said, referencing the organization’s cofounder Richard Fording, an American politics professor at the University. “We also work with national partners as well to eradicate obstacles to people voting.”
Felony disenfranchisement’s history traces back to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The act addressed some voting rights issues but did not clearly define moral turpitude, although a conviction of such a crime would result in a loss of voting rights.
“Each county registrar in each of Alabama’s 67 counties could determine for themselves, based upon their own biases, what constituted a crime or conviction of moral turpitude, and it was different in every county,” Miles said.
In 2016, Alabama passed the Definition of Moral Turpitude Act, which listed which convictions can result in the removal of one’s voting rights. More have been added since then, resulting in over 160 possible convictions.
“Somehow our legislators are not quite aligned with a lot of us, and things go in the wrong direction, and they added over 120 more convictions to the list,” Miles said.
Miles said students should speak out against voting right suppression and help those who think they cannot vote regain their rights.
“‘Power concedes nothing without a demand,’ as Frederick Douglass said. It never has, and it never will,” she said.
“I would rather be living amongst people who are engaged in the political system and want to exercise their voice in our communities, hopefully to make them better places. Democracy needs to have everyone’s voice.”
Students who attended the presentation said they felt motivated to take action.
“As organizations on campus, I think that there are ways that we can get involved while maintaining our non-partisan missions, but to create a space where more people can exercise the right to vote,” said Daniel Lynn, vice president of UA Vote Everywhere.
Zoi Moon, a junior majoring in strategic innovation for social issues through UA New College, said the discussion was “enlightening” for her as an Alabama resident.
“I’ve known a little bit about the voting issues, especially incarceration issues, that we face in Alabama,” she said. “I’m definitely taking away from this talk just more about felony disenfranchisement and how I can help out in my community.”
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