[Note: Because of the racially disproportionate way in which U.S. drug laws are enforced, African-American men are sent to prison on drug charges at 13 times the rate of white men even though drug offenders are overwhelmingly white. According to the Justice Dept., at current [1997] levels of incarceration, newborn African-American males in this country have a greater than 1 in 4 chance of going to prison during their lifetimes, while Latin-American males have a 1 in 6 chance. White males have a 1 in 23 chance of serving time. See LOS ANGELES - Al Gore may have lost America's presidential election not because of a badly designed ballot, dubious counting practices in Florida or the defection of independents to Ralph Nader, but because of the criminal justice policy he and Bill Clinton have pursued for the past eight years.That policy appears to have robbed the Democrats of victory by disenfranchising nearly one in three Black men in Florida, most of whose votes he would have received.]

Figures published yesterday show that 92% of Black voters in the south backed Mr Gore, compared with 7% per cent for George W Bush, in last Tuesday's election. Elsewhere in the US, Mr Gore led Mr Bush by 85% to 12% among Black men and 94% to 6% among Black women.

A total of 4.2 million Americans were not allowed to vote last Tuesday because they were in prison or had felony convictions. Of those, more than one third, or around 1.8 million, were Black, according to the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based group that researches and campaigns on the issue. Nationally, this amounts to 13% of all Black men.

The Sentencing Project, a Washington-based organisation that campaigns for alternatives to jail, and Human Rights Watch examined the extent of disenfranchisement in 1998 and discovered that in two states, Florida and Alabama, 31% of all Black men were permanently disenfranchised because of convictions, many for non-violent offences. In five other states, including the marginal states of Iowa and New Mexico, one in four Black men were permanently disenfranchised, and in Texas one in five Black men could not vote....

"In a stroke of divine justice, it turns out he [Gore] might have easily won Florida had it not been for the felony disenfranchisement laws that disproportionately strip the vote from African-American men," said Sanho Tree, director of the drug policy project of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. "Let's hope he ponders this long and hard while he waits for the recount."

The Clinton-Gore administration has been heavily criticised by penal reformers for its "war on drugs" which has led to more than 400,000 people being jailed, a disproportionate number being Black and Latino.

Only the states of Maine, Vermont and Massachusetts allow those convicted of felonies to vote.

Cedric Muhammad, editor of www.Blackelectorate.com , writes in his latest bulletin: "If he [Gore] and supporters are honest, they may have to blame the Clinton-Gore administration a criminal justice system that locked up Blacks wholesale over last eight years for non-violent offences.>

"Because 13% of all Black men [nationally] cannot vote because of incarceration and past felony convictions, and because this presidential election is so close, it may well be true that Blacks who have served their time in prison and gone on to lead productive and reformed lives could have provided the margin of victory for Al Gore and Democrats if they were allowed to vote."

Attempts to extend voting rights to ex-offenders have been stalled for more than a year by the House of Representatives' judiciary committee, and some see the disenfranchisement as a subtle form of denying the vote to a substantial part of the Black community....

_____________

    home     |     subscribe     |     talk     |     help-about     |     back issues     |     resources