The fight to make it easier for people convicted of felonies to restore their voting rights in Tennessee marked a win last week.
A federal judge ruled Tennessee needs to update its forms and process for voting rights restoration.
The judge also found Tennessee’s current process does not follow federal voting rights policies since the state asked people with felony convictions to provide unnecessary documents when applying to register to vote.
“It takes us a step closer to removing barriers for formerly incarcerated Tennesseans who are seeking free and fair access to the ballot box,” Gloria Sweet-Love, president of the Tennessee NAACP, said in a news release. “We must do all that we can — and we urge the courts and the state Election Division to do all they can — to guard against democratic backsliding, and ensure that all Tennesseans have voter protections.”
The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the Tennessee NAACP in December 2020, which objected to how the state complicates the restoration process.
Not all felony convictions result in a loss of voting rights, but the judge found materials used in Tennessee wrongly make it seem that way. The judge also found election officials were wrongly rejecting applications that indicated the person had a felony conviction, when some of those applicants may have been eligible to vote.
“The problem was, a lot of ex-offenders weren’t being informed of what their current status is, or what the conditions to get your rights restored exactly were,” Eric Atkins, with civil rights organization the Unity Group of Chattanooga, said by phone.
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Now, state elections officials must revise paper and online voter registration forms to reflect those nuances.
In Tennessee, felony convictions have stripped the voting rights of around 470,000 people — the second-highest number in the country, following Florida — according to a study by the Sentencing Project.
About 1 in 5 Black residents in Tennessee can’t vote because of a felony conviction, the study found.
Tennessee’s difficult process for restoring voting rights removes the power of a large chunk of potential Black voters, Atkins said.
“If you are good enough to go be employed and reenter society, why are you not good enough to go vote?” Atkins said.
In Hamilton County, 1,414 residents have lost their right to vote because of felony convictions since the start of 2017, data from the county’s election commission shows.
In the same time frame, 193 people with felony convictions managed to restore their voting rights, data shows.
Atkins said he’d like to see a streamlined process for restoring voting rights. In prison, people have access to education and employment training, he said — why not voting information?
“I do think it’s deliberate disenfranchisement,” he said.
Contact Ellen Gerst at egerst@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6319.