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44 years after landmark act, voting rights still needed. 5.3 Americans still disenfranchised due to felony convictions

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

44 years after landmark act, voting rights still needed By Erika Wood 08/06/2009 Today marks the 44th anniversary of the landmark Voting Rights Act. It was passed to reverse Jim Crow laws, which effectively denied African Americans the right to vote for decades. The Act has accomplished great things. It eliminated poll taxes, literacy tests and other ballot box barriers. Within a few years of its passage, voter registration rates among African Americans doubled, tripled and in some states quadrupled. Fast forward to the 2008 presidential election and its surge of African-American voter participation. Although the protections of the Act remain vital, according to one recent report, African-American women voters turned out at higher rates in November than any other racial, ethnic or gender group...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on August 07, 2009 (boomark / email).