Essay On Disenfranchisement

884 Words2 Pages

I’m Cosette Lieble, and I am here today asking for your attention as I tell you what happened in the past and what is happening now. Disenfranchisement. Disenfranchisement is a term that prevents people of a certain race, gender, or background from exercising their right to vote with subtle (or not so) laws. Disenfranchising was one of the more popular ways to separate whites and blacks. To start off, let’s begin with disenfranchisement in general. Disenfranchisement was something that was completely unseen by the government for 43 years, and was constantly used to deny voting rights to African Americans in the deep South. There were many ways to rig an election to get the white democratic vote, and here is a few examples. Literacy tests are one of the more infamous ones, where they would test to see if people of color were “literate” by giving them virtually impossible tests. Poll tax was another one, where you charged people to have a say in governmental matters, even Jim Crow laws had a play in this allowing It is called felony disenfranchisement, and it prevents people from voting if they have done a crime and are/were serving a sentence. The reason this causes so many issues is because as the Sentencing Project said, “ 6.1 million Americans cannot vote because of a felony conviction. 1 of every 13 African American lost their voting rights due to felony disenfranchisement law.” States like Florida and Kentucky prohibit felons, even if they have served their time, from ever voting again. This is fine with som since they are convicted felons and they feel as if that is suitable punishment, while on the other hand people are angered because it feels as if a person's right and responsibility is being taken away. Felony disenfranchisement is as big of a hot topic now as black disenfranchisement was

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