Tennessee adopts 'bottom of the barrel' roadblocks to restoring felons’ voting rights: report

22 July 2023

The Tennessee Board of Elections on Friday quietly adopted new policies that will make it harder for residents with criminal records to vote,The Guardian's Sam Levine and Kira Lerner reported on Saturday.

"Tennessee has one of the highest rates of disenfranchisement in the United States. More than 9% of the voting-age population, or around 471,600 Tennesseans, can't vote because of a felony conviction, according to a 2022 estimate by the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice non-profit. More than 21% of Black adults are disenfranchised," according to the correspondents.

"Previously, someone with a felony who wished to vote again had to pay all debts and then get government officials to sign off on a form – called a certificate of restoration – affirming their eligibility to vote. The process was burdensome, especially compared to the automatic restoration that occurs in a majority of states upon release from prison or after a period of probation or parole," the correspondents explained. But not anymore.

The updated guidelines, The Guardian revealed, mandate "that someone with a felony had to first successfully receive a pardon from the governor or have a court restore theirfull rights of citizenship. Once that is done, the person must then complete the certificate of restoration process to get their rights restored."

In a Friday memo obtained by The Guardian, Tennessee Elections Coordinator Mark Goins, who was recently elected as the chairman of the United States Election Assistance Commission Board, cited two recent State Supreme Court cases as justification for the changes:

For the person to have voting rights restored, the person must submit evidence of either a Pardon by the appropriate authority, or evidence of the person's full rights of citizenship having been restored, such as by a court. A copy of the applicable document must be submitted with the COR. If the person has had full citizenship rights restored by a court then a certified copy of the court order is required. A person who submits a COR without evidence of either a Pardon by the appropriate authority, or evidence of the person's full rights of citizenship having been restored must be instructed to provide evidence of either one of these requirements.

Campaign Legal Center lawyer Blair Bowie condemned the move, stressing that "it's very hard to get your restoration of citizenship" and "even harder than getting a Certificate of Restoration." Bowie added that "the new process is more difficult than the procedures that existed before the legislature created Certificates of Restoration in 2006 and it puts Tennessee in the bottom of the barrel on rights restoration as one of the only states with a fully discretionary process, alongside Mississippi and Virginia."

Levine's and Lerner's article continues at this link.

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