Human Rights

ACLU turns to international rights group in parolee voting quest

       
By WAYNE PARRY
Associated Press Writer

September 14, 2006, 2:38 PM EDT

NEWARK, N.J. -- Rebuffed in three attempts to get New Jersey to allow parolees to vote, the American Civil Liberties Union is appealing to an international human rights organization, hoping to bring pressure on the state to reverse its policy barring people from casting ballots after getting out of prison.

The group hopes that The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, part of the Organization of American States, will declare that the federal government, New Jersey and other states with similar voting restrictions are violating "universally accepted human rights standards."

The international agency has no power to compel the changes, but "we believe that the moral suasion of such an eminent hemispheric body would be taken very seriously by New Jersey officials," said Professor Frank Askin of Rutgers Law School Constitutional Litigation Clinic.

Over the past several years, the ACLU has sued New Jersey trying to overturn the ban on people on parole or probation from voting. The suit was dismissed, a state appeals court upheld the rejection, and the state Supreme Court refused to get involved.

"I'm already very civically active," said Stacy Kindt, a Point Pleasant Beach woman who served two years in prison for kidnapping, and still has another year and a half of probation to go. "I'm very interested and engaged in what's going on. But essentially, you have no voice.

"It's counterproductive to what society is asking us to do," she said. "They want us to come out and be contributing members of society. Voting is one way to do that."

The main claim of the lawsuit is that because 60 percent of the approximately 100,000 parolees and probationers in New Jersey are black or Latino, the ban on their voting should be unconstitutional.

"The premise of a participatory democracy is simple _ that citizens are able and encouraged to participate," said Laleh Ispahani, a lawyer for the ACLU. "The cornerstone of participating in our democracy is the right to vote. Ignoring the racial implications of denying blocks of people the right to vote violates basic democracy, fairness and human rights principles."

The Inter-American Commission receives, investigates and acts on petitions alleging human rights violations, and can bring cases to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, based in Costa Rica. That body also has no legal authority to compel changes in the United States.

A commission spokeswoman did not immediately return calls seeking comment Thursday.

Jeff Lamm, a spokesman for the state Division of Elections, said the voting ban was passed by the state Legislature. The law offers no supporting rationale for the ban.

According to the ACLU's petition, 19 other states and the District of Columbia have disfranchisement policies that are less sweeping than New Jersey's. Another 19 have the exact same policies, and the other 12 exclude even more categories of people than New Jersey.

Only two out of the 50 states _ Maine and Vermont _ permit voting in prison, a practice permitted by nearly one half of European nations, according to the petition.

Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.