Mikayla Davis
The Communicator
With general elections only a couple of months away, states are beginning their push for voter registration. However, if you have been convicted of a felony, you might have some trouble registering.
In Washington, while in jail or under the authority of the Department of Corrections, you are not allowed to vote.
“A person convicted of a felony in Washington receives his/her voting rights back as soon as he/she is no longer under the supervision of the Department of Corrections,” Adam Noble, Executive Assistant for the Secretary of State, said.
“Felons convicted in other states or in Federal courts can register in Washington as soon as they are no longer incarcerated.”
“It’s a fair system,” Dustin Blessing, a Spokane citizen said. Blessing was convicted of a felony charge five and a half months ago and is currently on probation. Currently, he cannot vote. “Once somebody pays their debt to society, they should be able to vote.”
The only way for those convicted of a felony to lose their voting rights after they’ve been released from the Department of Corrections is if they are convicted of another felony or if they “willfully failed to make three payments in a 12 month period,” Mike McLaughlin, Spokane County Elections Manager, said.
In states such as Florida, however, felons lose the right to vote for years after they are released from a sentence.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, in 2011, “the Florida Board of Executive Clemency (composed of the governor and three cabinet members) reversed a 2007 policy change that automatically restored voting rights to non-violent offenders upon the completion of their sentence. The new policy requires that all ex-felons wait between five and seven years before applying to regain voting rights.”
“I think that’s extremely strict,” Blessing said. “It’s really easy to get a felony. A couple of DUIs is a felony. A fistfight in a bar is a felony.”
According to the Spokane County Detention Services website, there are 1064 inmates in the custody of the Spokane County Jail. The SpokaneCares website says that Washington houses over 18 thousand prisoners each year.
According to the Pew Charitable Trusts, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to “improve public policy, inform the public and stimulate civic life,” those prisoners make up about one percent of the voting-age population in Washington that is disenfranchised due to prison sentence.
In contrast, 10.4 percent of Florida’s population is disenfranchised.
The Florida Department of Corrections says that it housed over 100 thousand inmates in their 55 state prisons in January 2014.
Many of these inmates are felons and thus, will not be allowed to vote for many years after they are released.
“They [felons] are still a part of society,” Blessing said. “Somebody shouldn’t have to pay for that for the rest of their life.”
To find out if you are eligible to vote, or to register to vote, visit the Secretarys site at www.sos.wa.gov/elections.