As citizens of the United States and participants in a democracy, we have basic rights protected by the Constitution including but not limited to, the right to vote.

Felons deserve to maintain their right to vote, no matter the crime committed.

Each state is given the right to decide if felons are allowed to maintain the right to vote post jail-time or post parole.

The decision for felon voting rights was given to the states in 1977 under the Articles of Confederation, where the states were given total control over voting rights, according to ProCon.Org

However, once you commit a crime in Kentucky these rights are stripped. A “violent” criminal who has served their time and done parole, can no longer vote on elections that directly affect them.

In Kentucky, felons were given no rights to vote until November 2015, when Gov. Steve Beshear issued an executive order that gave certain “non-violent” felons the right to vote.

This executive order was quickly redacted by Matt Bevin the following month, once again, giving zero voting rights post-parole, but then reversed a final time by Gov. Andy Beshear gave few “non-violent” criminals the right to vote once more, according to The Brennan Center for Justice.

Now any criminal whose crimes were considered “violent” have their voices silenced and no say in their country.

George Will, Columnist for the National Review argues with The Heritage Foundation that if felons don’t want to follow the law, then they should not have a say in it

Criminals maintaining their right to vote would “re-enfranchise thousands, maybe millions, of felons who have not changed their ways, so that people unwilling to follow the law would be making the law for everyone else,” Will said.

While felons may not have followed the law; laws and legislation still affect them. Revoking a felons right to vote essentially tells them they are “lesser” than other citizens.

“Despite no longer being incarcerated, I am still considered ‘less than’ a citizen because the state of Texas will not allow me to vote for another 26 years while I remain on parole,” Rovert Lilly in the The Sentencing Project, an organization that advocates for effective  human responses to minimize imprisonment.

The felons who were deemed “non-violent” may technically have their right to vote restored, but there is a process that makes voting increasingly difficult.

Oftentimes felons are not allocated an absentee ballot as well the voting machines or mail in ballots were prohibited in certain prisons.

Felons were technically allowed to vote, but  the mechanism to actually do so was removed.

This was brought to court in 1973 by Edward F. O’Brien, who discovered prisoners in New York were in Being denied their voting rights while incarcerated, in turn creating a new legislation stating felons cannot be denied the right to vote solely due to incarceration.

“In 1974, the Supreme Court ruled in O’Brien v. Albert Skinner, New York sheriff, that eligible incarcerated voters cannot be denied their constitutional right to vote due to their detainment. In that case, the Court found that pretrial detainees were unconstitutionally denied access to the ballot when they were not allowed to cast absentee ballots and the state failed to provide them with any other means of casting their vote,” Thurgood Marshall Institute said.

The basic fundamentals of democracy includes “the right of American citizens to vote and choose their representatives,” Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky said. 

This idea is the basis of American society, voting separates us from other governments, such as authoritarian or monarchies; taking away the right to vote moves society back decades.

“The disenfranchisement of incarcerated people is one of the biggest obstacles to criminal justice reform that our country faces. When an individual is behind bars, they are effectively voiceless. They do not have the ability to change the system that has harmed them. But by giving people behind the wall an opportunity to cast their ballot, we can give them their voice back. We can give them a say in the system that has led to their own imprisonment,” Jeremiah Mungo in The Sentencing Project.

“An estimated 4.4 million people are disenfranchised due to a felony conviction, a figure that has declined by 24 percent since 2016, as more states enacted policies to curtail this practice and state prison populations declined modestly,” The Sentencing Project said.

However, Kentucky has yet to enact these policies. While disenfranchisement may be decreasing, there are a series of issues located within our prison systems.

These issues can only be reported or voted upon by felons, however, while the same prisoner whose voice is needed is silenced by unjust voting restrictions. 

“The only way to upset this system is to connect those most impacted by it – incarcerated people – to their elected officials via the ballot,” Avalon Betts-Gaston in The Sentencing Project.

The only way to truly become a democracy is to give felons their voice back.