JACKSON, Miss. (AP) 鈥 Mississippi legislators advanced bills Monday to give voting rights back to 32 people convicted of felonies, weeks after a Senate leader killed a broader bill that would have restored suffrage to many more people with criminal records.
The move is necessary due to Mississippi's piecemeal approach to restoring voting rights to people convicted of felony offenses who have paid their debts to society. It also reflects the legacy of the state鈥檚 original list of disenfranchising crimes, which springs from the . The attorneys who have sued to challenge the list say authors of the state constitution removed voting rights for crimes they thought Black people were more likely to commit.
To have voting rights restored, people convicted of any of the crimes must get a pardon from the governor or persuade lawmakers to pass individual bills just for them, with two-thirds approval of the House and Senate. Lawmakers in recent years have passed few of those bills, and they passed none in 2023.
鈥淚 certainly don鈥檛 think this is the best way to do it,鈥 said Republican Rep. Kevin Horan of Grenada, who chairs the House Judiciary B Committee. 鈥淭here comes a point in time where individuals who have paid their debt to society, they鈥檙e paying taxes, they鈥檙e doing the things they need to do, there鈥檚 no reason those individuals shouldn鈥檛 have the right to vote.鈥
Despite lawmakers' dismay with the current process, some are trying to restore suffrage for select individuals. On Monday, lawmakers on House and Senate Judiciary committees passed a combined 32 bills. The bills were introduced after a House hearing on Wednesday some former felons face in regaining the right to vote.
Mississippi is among the 26 states that remove voting rights from people for criminal convictions, according to the .
Under the Mississippi Constitution, people lose the right to vote for 10 felonies, including bribery, theft and arson. The state鈥檚 previous attorney general, a Democrat, issued a ruling in 2009 that to 22 crimes, including timber larceny and carjacking.
In 1950, Mississippi dropped burglary from the list of disenfranchising crimes. Murder and rape were added in 1968. Attorneys representing the state in one lawsuit argued that those changes 鈥渃ured any discriminatory taint,鈥 and the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals court agreed in 2022.
Two lawsuits in recent years have challenged Mississippi鈥檚 felony disenfranchisement. The U.S. Supreme Court said in June that it the 2022 5th Circuit decision. The same appeals court on the other case in January and has not issued a ruling.
In March, the Republican-controlled Mississippi House passed a bill that would have allowed automatic restoration of voting rights for anyone convicted of theft, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, forgery, bigamy or 鈥渁ny crime interpreted as disenfranchising in later Attorney General opinions.鈥 But the bill died after Senate Constitution Committee Chairwoman Angela Hill, a Republican from Picayune, refused to bring it up.
Horan said the Republican House majority would only bring up individual suffrage bills for those who committed nonviolent offenses and had been discharged from custody for at least five years. Democratic Rep. Zakiya Summers of Jackson said she appreciated the House and Senate committees for passing the individual bills, but decried the death of the larger House bill.
鈥淭hat failed action plus the testimony we received during last week's hearing are proof the system is broken,鈥 Summers said. 鈥淲e should right this historic, oppressive wrong by passing legislation that fully restores all who have been disenfranchised despite the conviction.鈥
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Associated Press reporter Emily Wagster Pettus contributed to this report. Michael Goldberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow him at .
