Subject: Court case: 20,000 felons' voting rights at stake
From: "Dillon, Lauren" <[email-masked]>
To: RR2 <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2016 06:27:40 -0700

This is the story I was thinking of

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2016/03/29/justices-hear-major-voting-rights-case-iowa-felons/82277522/

Court case: 20,000 felons' voting rights at stake
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Associated Press
Kelli Jo Griffin less

More than 20,000 Iowa felons could be poised to regain their voting rights as part of a landmark case that will be heard Wednesday by the state Supreme Court.

Iowa justices will hear arguments in the case of a southeast Iowa woman who is challenging the Iowa law that permanently strips felons of their voting rights. Kelli Jo Griffin, 42, was convicted in 2008 of a felony cocaine delivery charge and had completed her sentence when she took her children in November 2013 to watch her vote in a municipal election, only to be charged with perjury for voting as a felon.

A ruling in favor of Griffin and her lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa could radically alter what critics have long argued is one of the nation's harshest felon disenfranchisement laws. But county prosecutors and auditors fear that such a ruling will make a mess of election procedures statewide.

Iowa, Florida and Kentucky are the only three states that permanently bar convicted felons from voting unless they complete a process for restoration — a requirement that groups such as the ACLU and NAACP contend is burdensome. Kentucky has begun moves to change its law.

For ex-offenders, especially those leaving prison, regaining the right to vote can be as helpful to rejoining society as getting involved in a church community or reuniting with families, said Myrna Perez, deputy director of the Democracy Program at the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice.

"We talk to criminal justices all the time who say, 'We want people to be successful in their re-entry,'" she said. "We need to get them integrated."

RELATED: Read briefs filed in the case<https://www.brennancenter.org/legal-work/griffin-v-pate>

Perez and other attorneys wrote a brief on behalf of the League of Women Voters of Iowa, urging the seven justices to adopt a clear legal standard that would allow felons who are not in prison to vote. There's little public policy justification for stripping people of their voting rights if they're judged safe enough to live in Iowa communities, she said.

The seven justices will wrestle with one central legal question over all other public policy concerns: They will have to figure out exactly what the framers of the Iowa Constitution meant when they took away voting rights from people convicted of an "infamous crime," said Ryan Koopmans, an independent attorney who blogs about Iowa appellate law.

Because the term "infamous crime" doesn't lend itself to a strict definition, Griffin's case may not be the last trying to determine who can and cannot vote in Iowa, Koopmans and others said.

"There almost certainly are going to be some gray areas,” said Todd Pettys, a constitutional law professor at the University of Iowa law school.

Vilsack, Branstad pave way for legal challenge

The oral arguments are in many ways the climax of a decade-long debate over voting rights in Iowa that has played out in both the legal and political arenas.

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Special to the Register

Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilack

It began during the second term of former Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Democrat who signed an executive order in 2005 creating an automatic process to restore voting rights to more than 115,000 ex-offenders who had completed their sentences.

The order was cheered by lawmakers and advocates from minority communities who had suffered the brunt of the longstanding felon disenfranchisement law.

Black Iowans in 2005 were being sent to prison at a rate 13 times higher than whites, according to data from the Sentencing Project.

“It is long overdue,” Iowa Rep. Ako Abdul-Samad, then a Des Moines School Board member, said when the order was announced. “This step is historical for Iowa.”

But Republicans criticized Vilsack's order as a cynical move to boost Democratic voter registrations.

“This is exactly the kind of mixed signal that waters down Iowa’s tough-on-crime reputation,” former Iowa House Speaker Christopher Rants told The Des Moines Register in June 2005.

In 2011, Gov. Terry Branstad took office and immediately rescinded Vilsack's order. Branstad replaced it with his own case-by-case system for restoring voting rights if a felon applies.

Aides for the Republican governor argued that voting rights should be earned and that ex-offenders should have to pay back court costs and restitution.

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Rodney White/The Register

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad

Then came a new development: On Sept. 30, 2013, shortly before 1 a.m., Polk County human resources chief Tony Bisignano was pulled over while driving a black Mercedes and arrested for driving drunk during his ultimately successful bid to win a seat in the Iowa Senate.

Bisignano pleaded guilty to an aggravated misdemeanor count of second-offense OWI, leading Democratic rival Ned Chiodo to legally challenge his candidacy. In a case that went before the Iowa Supreme Court in April 2014, a lawyer representing Chiodo argued the conviction should be considered an “infamous crime” that would bar Bisignano from voting or holding public office.

In the ruling, Chief Justice Mark Cady allowed Bisignano to stay on the ballot — but also laid out the road map for the current challenge to the disenfranchisement law, Koopmans said. The chief justice wrote the court should take a future case to decide whether all felonies are considered “infamous crimes” and laid out his own thoughts as to what might fit the definition.

“The crime must be classified as particularly serious, and it must be a crime that reveals that voters who commit the crime would tend to undermine the process of democratic governance through elections,” he wrote.

Disenfranchising veterans

When Griffin was sentenced to probation for a felony cocaine delivery charge in 2008, her defense attorney told her she'd get back her voting rights automatically after she finished her sentence. That information was true at the time, but it changed when Branstad issued his own executive order in 2011, according to a brief filed in the case from the ACLU of Iowa.

Griffin, who declined to be interviewed for this article, was acquitted of the perjury charge at a March 2014 trial after she testified that she had no idea about the change in Iowa's law on felon voters<http://news.yahoo.com/former-offender-acquitted-iowa-voter-fraud-case-174949059.html>, according to the Associated Press.

Attorneys with the ACLU of Iowa filed a lawsuit later that year against the Iowa Secretary of State and Lee County auditor seeking to get Griffin's voting rights restored, setting up the issue to be decided by the Supreme Court.

But the Iowa mother's story won't be the only one justices hear as they decide the case.

Des Moines attorney Joseph Glazebrook filed a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that felon disenfranchisement also hurts military veterans — whose run-ins with police often are linked to post-traumatic stress disorder or other mental health issues. The filing tells the story of Andy Hartman, a 65-year-old Iowan who served during the Vietnam War and was disenfranchised after being convicted of felony marijuana possession in 2009.

Hartman finished his sentence in 2011 after being paroled from a stint in prison, Glazebrook wrote. The longtime Iowan would have had his voting rights restored if he'd finished his sentence just one year earlier, when Vilsack's order was in effect.

"The ongoing deprivation of fundamental rights is anathema to the values our country was founded upon," Glazebrook wrote. "Those who have sacrificed so much should, at the very least, be given the utmost consideration when deciding which classes of persons the government may restrict from participation in our democracy."

In their brief filed with the court, attorneys with the ACLU argue the justices should adopt a definition of infamous crimes that encompasses only a small number of crimes that are an "affront to democratic governance."

Under that standard, only crimes such as election fraud, perjury and bribery would strip a felon of voting rights.

Election mayhem

In their own briefs, both the Iowa County Attorneys Association and Iowa State Association of Counties, which represents auditors across the state, urge the justices not to make any changes to the felon disenfranchisement rule.

Replacing Iowa's current rule with a legal standard will be confusing to election officials and volunteers, Kristi Harshbarger, an attorney representing the association of counties, wrote in a brief.

"County auditors cannot be expected to determine at polling places if a crime is one that is 'particularly serious' and a crime that 'reveals that voters who commit the crime would tend to undermine the process of democratic governance through elections,'" Harshbarger wrote. "The court needs to consider the practical realities of conducting elections and institute a bright-line test."

The justices will hear the arguments during their 9 a.m. session Wednesday.

What the Iowa Constitution says about voting rights

When the Iowa Constitution was ratified in 1857 it read, "Disqualified persons: No idiot, or insane person, or person convicted of any infamous crime, shall be entitled to the privilege of being an elector."

The constitution was changed in 2008 to read, "no person adjudged mentally incompetent" to eliminate concerns about outdated and offensive language.

How does a felon currently get back voting rights?

Today a felon must have completed or be current on all payments of court costs, restitution and fines to get back voting rights. A person who has not completed payments must show documentation and written evidence of a good-faith effort to make payments.

Next, a felon must complete a restoration of rights application that asks 29 questions, including whether the person has been arrested for any other crimes or owes alimony or child support.

An ex-offender must also request a copy of his or her Iowa criminal history record from the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. The record costs $15 and must be mailed to the governor’s office with the application.

Around 25,000 Iowans finished serving felony sentences between 2011 and 2013; 40 people regained their voting rights over the same period, according to a brief from the NAACP.