Evan Altman, a voting rights organizer for the American Civil Liberties Union, spoke to the Barton County chapter of Women for Kansas via Zoom last Sunday. While his main topic was protesting rights and how to stay safe at a protest, chapter leader Pam Martin acknowledged that his visit was after the fact, given that the No Kings rally took place the day before. However, his program allowed members to review the June 14 rally organized by Women for Kansas and the local League of Women Voters.
No Kings rallies in Great Bend and Larned were peaceful and were covered by the Great Bend Tribune. On the topic of voting rights, Altman was able to share information about another issue: 71,000 Kansans may not know they have a right to vote in upcoming elections.
Based on a recent report from the ACLU of Kansas, nearly 85,000 Kansans (about 1 in every 35 people in the state) with past felony convictions are currently eligible to vote. However, only 14,147 of those eligible individuals are registered, leaving roughly 71,000 who are eligible but unregistered. Some of them may not know their right to vote has been restored.
According to ACLU Kansas, when people are convicted of a felony in this state they lose the ability to vote. This is called “felony disenfranchisement.” “What many people don’t know is that after you’ve completed your sentence – including any term of supervised release – you can vote.”
The website explains, “If you have completed your sentence, including probation and parole, you can register to vote. This means you’ve completed any incarceration, probation, or parole and have been officially discharged. This does not include registration as an offender under KORA (the Kansas Offenders Registration Act) — being required to register under KORA does not disqualify you from registering to vote because it is not considered part of your sentence.”
The Kansas voter restoration project, Restore My Vote, seeks to ensure every eligible voter has the tools to be an active part of their community and make their voice heard. According to the ACLU website, “Kansas’s partial felony disenfranchisement does more than legally prevent Kansans from voting during their sentence – even after they become eligible again, it creates confusion, obstacles to voting, and discourages them from persisting even if denied incorrectly. Some community members have reported that when registering to vote with their local election offices after becoming eligible, they were initially denied based on outdated court records.”
We know there are plenty of people who never bother to register and even more who register but never bother to vote. This is true of the eligible voting population as a whole, including the vast majority who have never been convicted of anything. However, 71% of all eligible Kansans are registered to vote and only 16.6% of eligible Kansans with past felony convictions are registered to vote.
This matters because anyone eligible to legally register to vote should know his or her rights. All voices should be heard and all eligible citizens should be allowed to share a role in holding government and politicians accountable to the people. Being engaged in society makes better citizens. We should not let policy barriers and blatant misinformation exclude people from the electoral process. Voting should be safe and accessible to every legally eligible voter.
