Mississippi Votes Reacts to Federal Court Upholding Lifetime Felony Disenfranchisement Law

The Fifth Circuit has fallen short of their duty to Mississippians. Unfortunately, they’ve got this decision all wrong. We know that reasonable minds, including legal scholars, disagree with the courts assessment of this issue because in August 2023 a panel of judges struck down Mississippi’s felony disenfranchisement provision for violating the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

For 134 years, hundreds of thousands of Mississippi, majority of whom are African American, have been unlawfully stripped of their voting rights. Many of the 22 disenfranchising crimes outlined by Secretary of State Michael Watson and Attorney General Lynn Fitch, are outdated.

Why are we taking voting rights away for non-violent crimes like timber larceny and obtaining money/goods under false pretenses? In contrast, it sounds like Brett Farve who stole millions of dollars from the mouths of the most vulnerable children of Mississippi through the state’s welfare funds — shouldn't be able to vote.

This issue is fundamentally about POWER. African Americans make up 36% of Mississippi’s voting age population but nearly 60% of its disenfranchised individuals. This is not by mistake. Imagine if just half of those folks could vote. Our elections and elected officials would look much different.

The November 2023 governor’s race was the closest since 1999. Reeves was re-elected with 418,233 (50.9%) of the votes while Presley received 391,614 (47.7%) which is only a 26,619 vote difference.

With nearly 11% of its voting age population disenfranchised, making it the highest percentage than any state in the country, our elected officials are just fine with the status quo.

This decision is disappointing, a slap in the face, and shows how far we have yet to progress. As the saying goes, “Mississippi loves to be first in everything bad and last in everything good.”

Mississippi Votes, in coalition with organizations including the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), The League of Women Voters of Mississippi and the United States, the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP, the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign, Strong Arms of Mississippi, the Mississippi Prison Reform Coalition, the Reaching and Educating for Community Hope (RECH) Foundation, the People’s Advocacy Institute (PAI), and Black Voters Matter, expresses deep disappointment in the Federal Court's decision to uphold the Lifetime Felony Disenfranchisement Law. We remain committed to advocating for the rights of all Mississippi citizens and will continue our efforts to promote justice and equality.

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For more information, please refer to our Joint Statement with The League of Women Voters here.

Jarrius Adams is a Research Associate at Mississippi Votes.

For interviews or inquiries, contact Alexis Grace, Public Relations Coordinator, at agrace@msvotes.org.