1. Early voting is underway and this is the first election for some voters in states that recently expanded voting rights to felons. How does Tennessee’s law stop some people from voting?
A: Tennessee has the largest percentage of its population barred from voting — between 8 and 9 % of the voting age population is disenfranchised because of a felony conviction. The national average is under 2 %.
It’s one of 9 states that take away the right to vote for not only those in prison, but those on probation and parole, and many who have completed their sentence in its entirety.
Tennessee also has one of the 10 highest incarceration rates in the country, so there are more felons to begin with.
16 states allow the vote after prison, and after their parole/probation period has ended.
Two states, Maine and Vermont, and Washington DC, allow inmates to vote while in prison.
2. What does the lawsuit against the governor claim?
A: This suit was filed in 2020 and claims that the law violated the National Voter Registration Act. It’s still ongoing but recently the plaintiffs had a bit of a victory.
Some felons in Tennessee are permitted to vote – depending on when they were convicted and for what. But the lawsuit claims some elections officials have denied voter registration forms to anyone with a felony, even if that person indicated that they had never lost the right to vote. And for those trying to restore their right to vote, the state has a uniquely inaccessible, unequal and nearly impossible process.
The NAACP has called it a “wild-goose chase.” They sued the governor, and won a recent small battle in that case, when a district court agreed in April that the application process violated the National Voter Registration Act. The court agreed to enjoin — or stop — the policy in the middle of the 2024 election cycle.
So this case is ingoing, and there’s signs that the state’s law will be struck down, and it may join the other majority of states that allow all felons to vote after they leave prison. But not for this election, those 450,000 people won’t be casting ballots.