| White House Comments on Voting Rights Issues |
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| Written by Erika Wood | Brennan Center for Justice |
| Tuesday, 09 February 2010 16:55 |
 Nicole Kief at the ACLU discovered a recent, interesting development re: the Democracy Restoration Act and other voting issues that we wanted to let you know about. During an online chat last week, Heather Higginbottom, from the White House Domestic Policy Council, was asked about felony disenfranchisement by a disenfranchised citizen in Virginia. Ms. Higgenbottom responded that "[This is an issue] that many legislators, and President Obama is among them, was in the Senate and is now as President, believes we should address at the federal level."Ms. Higginbottom did not mention the DRA by name, and (like a lot of people who don't live and breath this stuff) she doesn't make a clear distinction between restoring voting rights to people who are out of prison and to those who have completed their entire sentence. But she goes on to say, "What we need to do is find more ways to encourage people to participate in the political process. We have talked about ways of doing that across the board. This is an area where we want more people to vote, we want to make it easier to vote. And the President's position and many others legislators' position is that, for felons, once you've served your sentence and you've done your time and you've completed that, you should have your voting rights restored.”
It is very exciting to hear the White House weigh in on this issue in such a positive way, and to clearly state that this is an issue that should be addressed at the federal level. We should work to clarify the administration's position on post-incarceration vs. post-sentence restoration, but in the meantime I think we should use these comments in our advocacy. Of course we cannot say that the White House supports the DRA (yet) but we can certainly say that the administration thinks this is an issue that should be addressed at the federal level.
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| Last Updated on Friday, 09 April 2010 21:08 |
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Democracy Restoration Act of 2009 (HB 3335)
