Incarcerated Pennsylvanians regain their right to vote after release, but Democratic state representatives worry they don’t vote enough, so they advanced legislation on Monday addressing the issue.
Voting 12-9 along party lines, Pennsylvania’s House State Government Committee approved Representative Carol Kazeem’s (D-Chester) resolution to study ex-prisoner election participation. After the Joint State Government Commission completes its research, officials would use the the information gathered to develop policies to aid former inmates’ resumption of voting.
Pennsylvania is one of 21 states allowing felons who have served prison time to vote after they return to society. Kazeem argued “de facto voter disenfranchisement” results when those reentering the Keystone State’s communities aren’t emphatically told about their restored voting rights. She lamented that meager electoral participation among this demographic could worsen other social problems associated with low civic engagement.
“Across America, there are many individuals that don’t know that they still have the right to vote once they are released from being incarcerated, and I feel as though we do not really do a good job with getting that information out,” Kazeem testified to the House panel. “I know that, during our campaigns, a lot of times we may tell individuals but there are many people that we do miss in the process of that. So regardless of the party, I just want individuals to know that they do have that human right as they’re going back in society to be able to come out and vote.”
Committee Minority Chair Brad Roae (R-Meadville) spoke against the measure, characterizing it as an unnecessary burden on the Joint State Government Commission which is already engaged in various studies at the behest of legislators.
“We keep passing resolutions to ask them to study things,” he said. “They don’t really have the resources to study things so the studies just get all backed up and whenever we ask them to start studying something else, they start a study but they’re also working on 19 other studies…. And then a lot of times, these studies, nobody reads them when they’re done and then nobody takes action on them if they do read them, so it’s largely a waste of time.”
Also on Monday, the State Government Committee passed a resolution tasking the same commission with a new research project intended to generate ways to reducing polling-place wait times. Representative Joe Webster’s (D-Collegeville) legislation directs the body to study how local election boards utilize poll workers, election settings and voting equipment. He suggested wait times at polling places may disproportionately affect minority or economically disadvantaged communities.
“I think there’s a lot of things for Pennsylvania to do better and if we don’t systematically analyze, plan and build for the future, we’re making a mistake,” Webster told committee colleagues. “The idea here is… let’s ask the Joint State Government Commission to really analyze what we should be doing so that every qualified elector has the opportunity to vote, that it’s efficient and streamlined and easy to do and then that those votes can be counted accordingly.”
Roae urged a no vote on the measure, pointing out that Republicans repeatedly passed election reforms when the GOP controlled both legislative chambers before this year but they failed to get the Democratic governor’s signature. The measures to which the minority chair referred contained voter-identification requirements, something to which former Governor Tom Wolf (D) and current Governor Josh Shapiro (D) objected.
“With all due respect…, these resolutions are really largely a waste of time,” Roae said. “So much has been done studying elections. We’ve passed election reform numerous times; it keeps getting vetoed.”
Like the ex-prisoner-voting measure, the Webster resolution passed 12-9 with all Democrats supportive and all Republicans opposed.
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Bradley Vasoli is managing editor of The Pennsylvania Daily Star. Follow Brad on Twitter at @BVasoli. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Carol Kazeem” by Carol Kazeem.
