CNS:
NAACP Spearheads Prison Vote Drive in Maine
The NAACP is registering voters at prisons in Maine, one of just two states that allow all inmates to vote while behind bars, in what is apparently the nation’s first such statewide drive.
The relatively few votes at stake – only a few hundred – mean the drive’s potential to affect outcomes this fall on such issues as gay marriage, marijuana laws and tax limits is low.
Wouldn’t you love to live in a state that only had a prison population of a few hundred?
Though prison inmates tend to skew to the Democratic side, the drive isn’t about furthering any political agenda, said Rachel Talbot Ross, president of the Portland chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
“It’s about establishing strong voter patterns and becoming a fully functioning person to re-enter society,” Ross said. “It’s part of the rehabilitation and re-entry process.”
The NAACP is wrapping up its effort in Maine prisons this week. After next June’s primary election, the organization plans to lead another drive at all 15 county jails, as well as state prisons.
Yes, Virginia. (Errr, that should be Maine.) It is about politics, and about Democrat Party voters. What other incentive would the NAACP have? When was the last time you heard about an NAACP voter registration drive held at suburban white fundagelical churches?
What I think is going on is that the NAACP has wanted felons (enhoosegowed, on probation or off probation) to have the vote for a long time. But they know it’ll go over like a lead balloon if they push it all at once, especially in black heavy or black significant states. So they’re doing a trial run in a state that: (1) Has a very low prison population to begin with, and (2) Is almost entirely lily-white in racial demographics such that blacks are a minority of its prison population, ergo whites are the majority. (I’m guessing off the top of my head that a state that is 90% white and 10% black would have a prison population that is 50/50.) The skids are better greased if the NAACP is able to sell the unwashed masses of white people that felons in prison should have the vote nationwide if the “trial run” among mostly white imprisoned felons in Maine seems to have no political consequence. Maine is a fairly blue state, after all, and a few hundred extra Democrats won’t flip ME from blue to red in 2012. That might be enough to fool enough people in enough swing states with big enough prison populations to let imprisoned (and all other) felons vote, and their votes would flip the states from red to blue. This could easily happen in OH, FL, MO and a few others.
It’s not focusing just on black inmates.
Volunteers already have registered an estimated 200 or more inmates at five of the state’s seven adult correctional centers. The Maine State Prison’s NAACP chapter – the only one of its kind in New England – has 70 members, many of them white, including the branch president, Ross said.
Randal Horr, a 49-year-old white inmate at the Bolduc minimum-security prison in Warren, registered as a Democrat when volunteers arrived. Going through the voting process helps him feel connected to the outside world and will help when he is released, he said.
Do you think that imprisoned white felons might have an incentive to join the NAACP? I’ll give you a hint, Sherlock: If you weaken the police and prosecutors such that blacks don’t get caught in the dragnet as much, then the loose net also won’t catch as many whites. That’s the calculus running through their heads. Though the reality is that it doesn’t quite work that way: Look at how much more harsh sentences are for given crimes under the same or similar extenuating circumstances in my part of Illinois versus Cook County, or in most of rural Missouri vs St. Louis City. Same states, same state civil rights codes, same Federal civil rights codes. If you commit an armed robbery in Harrisburg, Illinois, and you’re caught, you ARE going to prison, plea or no plea. If you commit an armed robbery on the South Side of Chicago, and assuming you’re caught (and you’re less likely to be caught in Chicago than in Harrisburg), and you plead out, there is a good chance you’ll be bounced out on probation. In Missouri, the local “alternative” publication founded and edited by that certain Donnybrook panelist sometimes prints horror stories about state prison sentences handed out to those who are first crime first time weed possession. Almost entirely do these cases come from rural southern Missouri with white defendants. There’s no way in hell that you’re going to state prison for weed possession (i.e. non-dealing) of any frequency in St. Louis City, especially if you’re black. I get the feeling that these white prisoners in Maine are grabbing at straws.
Only in Maine and Vermont are felons in state prisons allowed to cast ballots while serving their sentences. Those prisoners, however, still have to register to vote, something easier done on the outside.
I remember a 60 Minutes piece several years ago about a murder case in Vermont where the suspect was convicted and sent to Vermont’s only prison. They showed the prison, and there were very few in number (I think there were not even 100 at the time), and from the footage they showed, there was only one black. Security as at a minimum, because it didn’t need to be any higher. Inmate violence against other inmates and guards was very low and tame. (In my attempt to find the exact number of Vermont prison inmates, I came across stories complaining that Vermont’s black prison population doubled. Meaning they got their second black.) I imagine that the NAACP is going to try this in Vermont next, and Vermont, being Greenwich Village North, a state where hypocrite white liberals have moved to escape the consequences of their actions, is so blue that it’s indistinguishable from black. They’ll eat up anything the NAACP does in the state like organic lettuce going out of style.
