{"id":20918,"date":"2017-03-01T15:26:21","date_gmt":"2017-03-01T21:26:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=20918"},"modified":"2017-03-03T10:20:10","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T16:20:10","slug":"bill-would-eliminate-waiting-period-for-voting-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/?p=20918","title":{"rendered":"Bill would eliminate waiting period for voting rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee heard testimony March 1 on a bill that would restore voting rights upon completion of a felony sentence or probation. Current law requires a two-year waiting period.<\/p>\n

\"Sen.
Sen. Justin Wayne<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Omaha Sen. Justin Wayne, sponsor of LB75, said the two-year waiting period is outdated and unnecessary. Almost all felons now are subject to supervised release, he said, so they already experience a period of time post-incarceration in which they are not allowed to vote. Extending that period by two years is unfair and disproportionally impacts minority communities, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Voting] is one of our most fundamental rights and one of the most basic tenets of our democratic process,\u201d Wayne said. \u201cWe can send a message that we\u2019re no longer going to disenfranchise people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Former state senator DiAnna Schimek of Lincoln testified in support of the bill. Prior to 2005, she said, ex-felons in Nebraska had to go before the state\u2019s pardons board in order to have their right to vote reinstated. The two-year waiting period was attached to the bill that automatically restored the right to vote in a pragmatic effort to help ensure its passage, she said.<\/p>\n

In the intervening years, Schimek said, it\u2019s been shown that people who vote after they are released from prison are less likely to reoffend.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a matter of public safety the state should encourage full political participation,\u201d she said. \u201cThere is an easy fix \u2014\u00a0eliminate the two-year waiting period so an individual\u2019s right to vote is restored immediately upon release.\u201d<\/p>\n

Danielle Conrad, testifying on behalf of ACLU of Nebraska, also supported the bill. Restrictions on voting for ex-felons serve to silence the political voice of minority populations, she said. For example, she said, while only 10 percent of the state\u2019s population identify as members of a racial or ethnic minority, they comprise more than 40 percent of the incarcerated population.<\/p>\n

In addition, Conrad said, Nebraska has one of the most overcrowded prison systems in the country. The more deeply an ex-felon can connect to his or her community, the less likely they are to return to prison, she said, and voting is one of those connections.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we can shave off even just a few percentage points on that recidivism rate, it has a significant impact on overcrowding,\u201d Conrad said.<\/p>\n

Shakur Abdullah, a case manager at ReConnect Inc., a prison reentry initiative in Omaha, said he has never voted. Testifying in support of the bill, Abdullah said he was released from prison a year ago after serving a decades-long sentence for a crime he committed as a juvenile.<\/p>\n

The two-year waiting period makes him a \u201csecond-class citizen,\u201d Abdullah said, adding that more than 7,000 people in Nebraska have completed their sentence but cannot vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cI served my sentence, every day of it, yet that fact hasn\u2019t placed me on par or on square with other citizens,\u201d he said. \u201c[Yet] I\u2019m taxed like every other citizen in the state. Taxation without representation \u2013 that is the status that I am in.\u201d<\/p>\n

No one testified in opposition to LB75 and the committee took no immediate action on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee heard testimony March 1 on a bill that would restore voting rights upon completion of a felony sentence or probation. Current law requires a two-year waiting period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[191],"class_list":["post-20918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-military-and-veterans-affairs","tag-sen-justin-wayne"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20918"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20970,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20918\/revisions\/20970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/update.legislature.ne.gov\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}