It is ironic how most of the rights that genuinely matter in the United States were legally taken away from me before I even knew I had them. I made one wrong decision at the vulnerable and impressionable age of 19, and it got me banished from the political process. My right to vote, my right to bear arms, and my right to serve on a jury — just to name a few — were all stripped away. I am not an anomaly. I am one of millions of Black and Brown people who have been convicted of a felony and forced into disenfranchisement.
It was mind-blowing to read for the first time, in my 20s, sitting inside a level 4, 180 degree maximum security prison, that the same rights taken away from me were protected under the 14th Amendment. My right to vote was also guaranteed by the 15th Amendment, and the “highest court in the land” confirmed as much more than a 100 years ago. The Supreme Court explained as early as 1886 that voting is “regarded as a fundamental political right” because voting protects all other rights. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, "Voting is the foundation stone for political action."
Hence, prisoners should have the right to vote because for a democracy to function correctly and reflect the wants and needs of the people, every citizen should be able to participate in the election of representatives whose thinking and policies reflect our collective thinking as communities on a local, state, and federal level. The numbers are staggering — an estimated 5.3 percent of the adult Black population in the United States cannot vote, more than three times the general population, according to The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit.
How is it that a class of people who are subjects of the law through punishment cannot influence the manner in which they are governed?
The power of Black and Brown communities as a whole is reduced by disenfranchisement. We are criminalized and locked up to maintain the status quo. Stringent laws ensure that we can’t participate in the electoral process, a process that we were given at birth by the constitution. This is not by accident. This is done strategically to rob us for political reasons, and it leaves us feeling as though democracy doesn't work for us. Instead, it works for the few and continues to prop up white supremacy and capitalism.
Take away my vote and you are taking away my voice. Am I not a citizen? Do I not have a say in how I'm governed? Even as a prisoner, the government took taxes out of my weekly paycheck but denied me the right to have a say in my representation. A society that prevents the people who’ve been systematically harmed and oppressed in this way is neither just nor equal.
Shaheed Price provides court advocacy for Pillars of the Community