Letter: Support voting rights for inmates

Every Illinoisan should support Illinois SB 828, which will extend voting rights to 30,000 convicted Illinois inmates if enacted next legislative term. Championed by Illinois Reps. La Shawn Ford, Kelly Cassidy and voting rights advocates, the measure would extend inmate voting to include the convicted besides just pretrial detainees.

Rep. Cassidy summed up the issue stating, "There is a growing understanding of the inherent unfairness and the disproportionate impact on communities of color. As long as we are going out of our way to put more black and brown people in prison, that's going to impact the voting rights of those communities."

Even without extending the vote to convicted felons, Illinois is ahead of several dozen states that deny voting to detainees, even released felons. That disenfranchises over 6 million ex-cons in the most incarceration-crazy nation on earth.

Opponents argue the incarcerated have forfeited their right to vote as just punishment for their anti-social behavior. Yet, if the goal of justice is to both protect the public and rehabilitate the incarcerated for eventual return to society, convict voting serves both purposes. It has no adverse effect on public safety and may have a positive effect on rehabilitation by encouraging felons to re-engage with the society from which they've been excluded.

Illinois should join just two states, Maine and Vermont, that allow convicted inmates to vote.

How is convict voting working in Maine and Vermont? FBI violent crime stats place Vermont 49th and Maine dead last in violent crime per hundred thousand residents. Alaska and New Mexico top the 50 in violent crime per hundred thousand. The reasons must be many, but convict voting certainly doesn't hurt.

Walt Zlotow

Glen Ellyn