Voting Rights Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Us & Them: Locked Out Of Voting?

Millions of people in the U.S. cannot vote because they’ve been convicted of a felony. A majority of those are not currently in prison, but on probation or parole. In this episode, we look at the nation’s patchwork of voting rights laws and the confusion they can create.

More than 4.5 million Americans cannot vote because of a felony conviction but only about a quarter are currently in prison.

On the newest episode of Us & Them, host Trey Kay talks with people who support expanded voting rights for felons, and those who say people who’ve committed crimes should forfeit their rights until they serve their entire sentence, including any probation or parole.

Felon disenfranchisement laws differ significantly from state to state and even legal experts say it can be difficult for someone to know their rights. In a few states, a person can vote from prison, while in others, voting rights are restored upon release or completion of parole or probation. Despite recent trends to expand voting rights, some states are moving in the opposite direction. In Florida, voters passed an amendment to restore voting rights to most people with felonies, but lawmakers passed a new law requiring that people pay all of their court fees first. And in Virginia, only the governor can restore the right to vote for someone convicted of a felony.

This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council and the CRC Foundation.

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Anthony Cole, 32, is from Huntington, West Virginia. He was released from prison in May 2023 after serving 12 and a half years for second-degree murder.

“I started life over, I’m living as a productive citizen. I work for the food bank. I’m trying to give back to the community at the same time, as well as feed myself. Like, I’m back into society, I should be able to be a part of society … That’s what our politics and our whole system is off of. [It’s] supposed to be equality … But it feels even less than now because my voice is completely silenced in that matter.”

— Anthony Cole

*Photo Credit: Trey Kay/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Sara Carter is a legal fellow with the Brennan Center, a nonprofit dedicated to civil liberties and voting rights. She tracks nationwide trends and variations in voting laws for felons from state to state. She says in some states, felons can vote no matter what crimes they’ve been convicted of — even from prison. On the other end of the spectrum, in Virginia, for example, those convicted of a felony can only restore their voting rights with an appeal to the governor.

“Everyone should be able to have a say in who governs them, and everyone should be able to be represented, no matter how they choose to exercise that right when it comes to an election.”

— Sara Carter

*Photo Credit: Brennan Center for Justice*

Natalie Delia Deckard is an associate professor of criminology at the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada.

“There is absolutely no way to talk about voting rights in the United States without talking about the fact that the United States has the highest incarceration rate in not only the world but in world history. We know that incarceration is not sprinkled randomly through the society, it’s not just that men are overwhelmingly more likely to have criminal records. It’s that racialized men are more likely to have criminal records, because of the ways in which we understand crime … It’s also about poverty and class. It’s poor men that go to jail, they go to prison. We absolutely know that class divisions very much predict voting divisions.”

— Natalie Delia Deckard

*Photo Credit: University of Windsor*

Mac Warner is West Virginia’s Secretary of State. He’s running for governor this year as a Republican.

“They have violated the state code, they have committed a criminal offense. And they have shown that they are not worthy at that time, they’ve done something to go against the people of the state of West Virginia. And so we wouldn’t want people who are committing crimes to then be a part of a system that would allow them to vote for someone who may then decide to change and say, ‘These criminal offenses are OK.’ It serves as a deterrent value. So people know that they lose those rights when they commit an offense. And, again, this is just part of the criminal justice system. We all want them to be a part of society, again, with voting rights, but we want them to serve their time for the crime that they committed. There is no effort to suppress votes or to keep somebody from voting.”

— Mac Warner, West Virginia’s Secretary of State

*Photo Credit: Trey Kay/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Mike Stuart was the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia. He currently serves in the West Virginia State Senate and is running for state attorney general.

“I know that we live in a period of time, where there’s a heavy emphasis on criminal rights. I support that, too. We’ve got to make sure we treat folks humanely, that we try to be in the business of rehab and rehabilitation and treatment, especially when it comes to the drug scourge. But I’m focused on victims. …I fully support the idea of the restoration of rights, but after you’ve served your entire penance, to society … and that means … not only your time behind bars, but your period of supervised release, if there’s a period of probation, it’s at the end of that entirety, that you ought to get the restoration of rights. West Virginia already does this today. I just think I’m one of those folks that truly believe that there’s a purpose to punishment, we don’t do it to hurt people. We do it for the rehabilitation part … they’re not part-time, or lesser citizens because they don’t have the right to vote. And we didn’t take that right from them. They took it from themselves when they committed the heinous crime, whatever crime it happened to be.”

— Mike Stuart, WV State Senator

*Photo Credit: Trey Kay/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Autumn McCraw was born and raised in West Virginia. She says she used drugs for several years and spent more than two and a half years in prison for felony convictions. After she was released from her most recent incarceration, she went to a recovery residence. She says she hasn’t used drugs in over six years. After she was released from parole, she registered to vote and decided to laminate her voter registration card.

“I opened the card … and I held it in my hand, and I just looked at it and I’m like, ‘I have arrived.’ It was a really emotional moment for me. I cried because I felt like I belonged again. Like I can contribute again. Like this is my ticket back into the forefront of society and not just necessarily in the shadows or in the underbelly.”

— Autumn McCraw

*Photo Credit: Trey Kay/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

The Future Of The American Chestnut And Our Latest Us & Them, This West Virginia Morning

On this West Virginia Morning, WVPB last spring covered efforts at Shepherd University to regrow American chestnut forests in Appalachia. One year later, that project has incorporated new technology and a familiar tree variant. Jack Walker caught up with a pair of self-proclaimed “chestnutters” to discuss the project at large, and the future of the American chestnut.

On this West Virginia Morning, WVPB last spring covered efforts at Shepherd University to regrow American chestnut forests in Appalachia. One year later, that project has incorporated new technology and a familiar tree variant. Jack Walker caught up with a pair of self-proclaimed “chestnutters” to discuss the project at large, and the future of the American chestnut.

Also, in this show, more than 4.5 million Americans cannot vote because they’ve been convicted of a felony. On the newest episode of Us & Them, host Trey Kay looks at the patchwork of state laws that restore voting rights to people after those convictions. The laws differ significantly from state to state. A few allow a person to vote from prison, while others require release and completion of probation or parole. Kay meets Anthony Cole who’s been out of prison for nearly a year after serving 12 and a half years. We listen to an excerpt from the next Us & Them: “Locked Out of Voting?”

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.

Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.

Chris Schulz produced this episode.

Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning

Senate Moves To Narrow Voter Registration Laws

How long you can stay active as a voter without using that right may be changing if a bill passed Thursday by the Senate becomes a law.

How long you can stay active as a voter without using that right may be changing if a bill passed Thursday by the Senate becomes law.

Senate Bill 622, changes the time period of voting inactivity for removal from voter registration. Currently, a voter can go four years without voting or updating voter information before being considered inactive. This bill moves it to two years.

For example, if a voter didn’t vote in one presidential election, they could be ineligible to vote in the next presidential election.

The bill is a use it or lose it voting law. If voters don’t vote for more than two years, they get flagged.

However, if voters confirm their address or register for a change of address, they will stay registered to vote, and their inactive status will be dropped. Voters can vote in any local, state or federal election or ballot to stay an active voter.

Lead sponsor of the bill Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, said the bill is to make sure voters are not registered to vote in two different precincts and to verify voter eligibility.

“We’ve been working on purging our voter rolls quite a bit,” Tarr said. “I think the first purge we did of 400,000 people who were not eligible to vote in West Virginia who had voter registration. So this bill is about making sure that people who show up to vote are people who are eligible to vote.”

The bill is similar to a law passed in Ohio that led to a Supreme Court case and nearly 150,000 Ohio voters being purged from the state roll.

Big Voting Bill Faces Defeat As Two Democrats Won't Stop Filibuster

Voting legislation that’s a top priority for Democrats and civil rights leaders seemed headed for defeat as the Senate opened Tuesday, a devastating setback enabled by President Joe Biden’s own party as two holdout senators refuse to support rule changes to overcome a Republican filibuster.

The Democratic senators, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, face strong criticism from Black leaders and civil rights organizations for failing to take on what the critics call the “Jim Crow filibuster.”

The debate carries echoes of an earlier era when the Senate filibuster was deployed by opponents of civil rights legislation. It comes as Democrats and other voting advocates nationwide warn that Republican-led states are passing laws making it more difficult for Black Americans and others to vote by consolidating polling locations, requiring certain types of identification and ordering other changes.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer acknowledged the current bill’s likely defeat this week. But he said the fight is not over as he heeds advocates’ call to force all senators to go on record with their positions.

“The eyes of the nation will be watching what happens this week,” Schumer said as he opened the session Tuesday.

This is the fifth time the Senate will try to pass voting legislation this Congress.

The Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act combines earlier bills into one package that would make Election Day a national holiday, ensure access to early voting and mail-in ballots — which have become especially popular during the COVID-19 pandemic— and enable the Justice Department to intervene in states with a history of voter interference, among other changes.

Both Manchin and Sinema say they support the package, which has passed the House, but they are unwilling to change the Senate rules to muscle it through that chamber over Republican objections. With a 50-50 split, Democrats have a narrow Senate majority — Vice President Kamala Harris can break a tie — but they lack the 60 votes needed to overcome the GOP filibuster.

Just as they blocked Biden’s broad “Build Back Better” domestic spending package, the two senators are now dashing hopes for the second major part of Biden’s presidential agenda. They are infuriating many of their colleagues and faced a barrage of criticism during Martin Luther King Jr. Day events.

Martin Luther King III, the son of the late civil rights leader, compared Sinema and Manchin to a white moderate his father wrote about during the civil rights battles of the 1950s and 1960s — a person who declared support for the goals of Black voting rights but not the direct actions or demonstrations that ultimately led to passage of landmark legislation.

“History will not remember them kindly,” the younger King said, referring to Sinema and Manchin by name.

Once reluctant to change Senate rules himself, Biden used the King holiday to pressure senators to do just that. But the push from the White House, including Biden’s blistering speech last week in Atlanta comparing opponents to segregationists, is seen as too late, coming as the president ends his first year in office with his popularity sagging.

“It’s time for every elected official in America to make it clear where they stand,” Biden said on the King holiday. “It’s time for every American to stand up. Speak out, be heard. Where do you stand?”

The Senate is launching what could become a weeklong debate, but the outcome is expected to be no different from past failed votes on the legislation. Biden has been unable to persuade Sinema and Manchin to join other Democrats to change the rules to lower the 60-vote threshold. In fact, Sinema upstaged the president last week, reiterating her opposition to the rules changes just before Biden arrived on Capitol Hill to court senators’ votes.

Senators have been working nonstop for weeks on rule changes that could win support from Sinema and Manchin. The two, both moderates, have expressed openness to discussing the ideas, but have not given their backing.

Both Manchin and Sinema have argued that preserving the filibuster rules, requiring a 60-vote majority to pass most legislation, is important for fostering bipartisanship. They also warn of what would happen if Republicans win back majority control, as is distinctly possible this election year.

Critics have also assailed Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who is leading his party against the voting legislation. The Kentucky senator has argued the legislation is a federal overreach into state-run elections, and he harshly criticized Biden’s speech last week as “unpresidential.”

“We cannot think of a time more defining to the American story than the chapter you are presently writing,” NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson wrote in an open letter to the Senate.

“What country will your children and grandchildren be left with, given the relentless assaults on American freedom and democracy?”

Manchin spokeswoman Sam Runyon said in a statement late Monday: “Senator Manchin believes strongly that every American citizen of legal age has not only the right, but also the responsibility to vote and that right must be protected by law. He continues to work on legislation to protect this right.”

Sinema’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

The voting bill was the Democrats’ top priority this Congress, and the House swiftly approved H.R. 1 only to see it languish in the Senate.

Voting Laws Debated On National, State Level

A record 158 million people voted in the 2020 presidential election. That makes up six out of every 10 people of voting age and two thirds of the estimated registered voters in the country.

Since the last election, several GOP-led states have passed laws that limit who can submit mail-in ballots and vote early. At the same time, U.S. Senate Democrats are pushing to loosen restrictions on a federal level with proposed laws like the For the People Act.

But that bill hasn’t made it to the Senate floor yet for a full vote, and some leaders say it likely never will. Some of the more contentious elements in it are that it would require all states to have same-day voter registration, alternative options to voter IDs, and a 15-day mandatory early voting period.

In a statement, Republican Sen. Shelly Moore Capito says the federal act is unnecessary, as a record number of voters turned out in 2020. Capito says this proves that states are capable of passing adequate election and voter rights laws.

capito“The so-called ‘For the People Act’ is a despicable, disingenuous attempt to strip states of their constitutional right to administer elections, and should never come close to reaching the president’s desk,” she said. “Simply put, this was never about getting more people to vote, but rather a way for Democrats in Congress to power grab and fix problems that do not exist.”

A compromise piece of voting legislation, called the Freedom to Vote Act, has been introduced into Congress as well. It differs from earlier legislation with new protections against voter suppression, restores Election Day as a public holiday, and institutes automatic voter registration.

But last month the U.S. Senate voted down an attempt to close debate on the law. That vote was 49 in favor of moving it forward and 51 opposed, even though the bill had 50 sponsors. U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer switched his vote to a no so he could bring it back up for another vote later. Until that procedural vote happens, the bill cannot move forward.

In a statement, West Virginia Secretary of State Mac Warner referred to the Freedom to Vote Act as “nothing more than a watered-down version of the ‘For the People Act.’”

“The ‘Freedom to Vote Act’ is a solution in search of a problem,” Warner said. “It is nothing more than an attempt to circumvent the authority placed on state legislatures by the U.S. Constitution.”

But West Virginia Democratic legislators and activists are still pushing for the Freedom to Vote Act. They recently held a press conference on the street outside of the Kanawha County Voter Registration Office in Charleston.

Former Secretary of State Natalie Tennant put pressure on Sen. Joe Manchin to push the act over the line.

“Inaction is not an option. Now, I’d like to take credit for those words. But I can’t. Do you know whose words they are?” Tennant asked the crowd. “Senator Manchin. Do you know whose bill this is? Senator Manchin.”

Tennant referred to the fact that Manchin was an original sponsor of the Freedom to Vote Act and negotiated it as a compromise. Since Republicans blocked it, Manchin has balked at changing voting rules in the Senate to get it past the filibuster.

In the meantime, Warner and the 55 West Virginia county clerks have been addressing election security in the state.

Since January 2017, more than 364,000 deceased, outdated, out of state, duplicated, and convicted felon voter files were removed from the voting rolls, according to data from the secretary of state’s office.

“Almost 28 percent of our list was inaccurate,” according to Mike Queen, deputy chief of staff in the Secretary of State’s office. “In the last election, we had 802,000 people to vote. That was 75 percent of those who were eligible, and that made us one of the highest states in the nation.”

Queen says this proves West Virginia can maintain voting and election integrity, without new federal legislation.

Over the same four and a half-year period, county clerks have registered 255,000 more people to vote, including 64,000 18-year-old high school students. That leaves the net number of registered voters about 100,000 lower than before they began purging the voting rolls. As of October, there were currently 1,129,510 registered voters in West Virginia.

One sticking point for many Republicans in the proposed Freedom to Vote act is same-day voter registration.

“We can’t have same-day registration in West Virginia. We don’t have an internet connected system,” Queen said. “And the real challenge for any same-day registration is to make sure that they don’t register at one place in Greenbrier County, and then register again, up in Harrison County.”

Kanawha County Delegate Jim Barach said that same-day registration should be a right — no matter what it takes.

“We should just automatically have the right to vote,” Barach said. “If you are 18 or over and an American citizen with very few exceptions, you should be able to go to a polling place, you should be able to register on that day, you should be able to cast a ballot. And that’s all there is to it.”

With the Freedom to Vote act stalled, that leaves voter rights laws in the hands of individual states. During the legislative interim meeting of the Joint Standing Committee of the Judiciary earlier this week, state senators and delegates discussed the state’s election laws at length.

Deak Kersey, general counsel for the secretary of state speaking to the Standing Committee on the Judiciary during legislative interim meetings.

“These bills have been crafted at the request of various folks, whether it be a member or someone in leadership or a community member, the county clerk, whoever it might be,” said Deak Kersey, general counsel for the secretary of state. “These aren’t just ideas that we sat around with the secretary and put on paper.”

He noted this was the first time in his memory that the legislature had taken the time to discuss voting law changes this early in the year, rather than waiting until the legislative session was going on. He felt the change was a positive one.

“Because of the national interest in election changes and the fact that the Department of Justice is even suing some states for election law changes that they’ve made,” Kersey said. “We want good election laws, not bad election laws.”

Proposed laws before the legislature include changing the deadline for requesting an absentee ballot from six to 12 days, and putting into law a provision that voting machines cannot connect to the internet. It is already a policy, and Kersey says this is to avoid potential hacking and fraud.

These proposed rules, among others, will come before the full legislature in January.

‘Moral Motorcade’ Aimed At Manchin Makes Demands For Living Wage

About 40 people stood in the hot sun at the state capitol as part of the “Mass Moral Motorcade on Manchin.” They began their journey in Madison as a tip of the hat to the March on Blair Mountain — a violent labor uprising that saw West Virginians demand better.

The motorcade was sponsored by the state and national chapters of the Poor People’s Campaign, led by Rev. Dr. William Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis.

Jean Evansmore, a state representative for the campaign, says low wages keep even working people poor.

“That is poverty. You didn’t cause it. The system caused it. Get involved with us and fight the system,” she said.

The protest was the latest effort by the groups to sway Manchin. Speakers called for Manchin to end Congress’ filibuster, pass all provisions of the For the People Act, fully restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act and pass a $15 an hour federal minimum wage.

Another speaker at the event, June Spence, an organizer from Common Defense, explained that it is the nation’s largest grassroots veteran organization.

“We want our concerns to be known to Sen. Manchin. One hundred years ago, our ancestors in these hills fought for the right of labor, of a dignified work area, to get paid an actual living wage and not work under company scrip,” she said. “We are here demanding a livable wage. Again.”

Manchin was not in attendance and there was no direct response from his staff.