As the Democratic candidates debate whether current and former prisoners should be allowed to vote, it’s worth recalling that many other countries make it easy for incarcerated people to do it. I’ve represented the United States throughout the world as an international elections monitor, visiting polling stations, talking to elections officials and helping international teams assess whether elections are free and fair. The United States is an outlier. Its suppression of voting rights for more than 6.1 million people with current or former felony convictions violates human rights and weakens our democracy. I wish our lawmakers who wrongly approve of this could see what I’ve seen — especially the Florida Republicans who just passed a bill undercutting a constitutional amendment restoring the franchise for people with former felony convictions.

Source: International New York Times May 08, 2019 15:11 UTC