'When you don't have the right to vote, you are a nobody,' felon tells Mississippi lawmakers

When Kenneth Almons, a Jackson native, was arrested for aggravated assault and bank robbery at the age of 19, losing his right to vote was one of the least of his concerns.

More than 20 years later, he is now working for the City of Jackson, and he feels he has lost a voice within his community and the ability to ensure elected officials in his hometown are fit for the job.

"(To have my voting rights back), it would mean I am no longer a nobody," Almons said. "When you don't have the right to vote, you are a nobody."

Almons was one of five people who were previously convicted of disenfranchising felonies to tell their stories to lawmakers Wednesday at the Mississippi State Capitol and say why the more the thousands of Mississippians who have lost the right to vote should have their suffrage returned.

"I want to make sure that the person who's representing me is somebody that I voted for, who can actually speak up for when I speak about things," another speaker, Walter Lewis, said.

The hearing was sponsored by several advocacy groups and House lawmakers, including Rep. Kabir Karriem, D-Columbus, who filed House Bill 1609, a bill that would have restored voting rights to certain non-violent offenders whose crimes were featured on the state disenfranchisement list.

"We fight every day for Medicaid expansion, and we've been fighting every day for the formula to fully fund our public schools, the PERS situation, but voting rights is just as important, and we have to do all we can while we can to make sure this issue stays at the forefront because people of Mississippi deserve their voting rights back," Karriem said.

Rep. Zakiya Summers, D-Jackson, said that the number of those people is more than 55,000, or about 1.9% of the state population.

The hearing came less than two weeks following Senate Constitution Committee Chairwoman Angela Hill's, R-Picayune, failure to call a committee meeting to take up HB 1609 by a legislative deadline after it had passed through the House 99-9. She later told Mississippi Today, "The constitution speaks for itself."

It was the first time in more than a decade that lawmakers in the legislature seriously took up suffrage for people previously convicted of felonies.

Disenfranchisement was adopted by the Mississippi Legislature in 1890 with the purpose of stripping voting rights from Black voters by establishing crimes that lawmakers thought at the time Black people were likely to commit such as murder, timber larceny, possession of stolen property and murder, James K. Vardaman, who served as both governor and U.S. senator at the time, declared.

“There is no use to equivocate or lie about the matter. Mississippi's constitutional convention of 1890 was held for no other purpose than to eliminate the (expletive) from politics,” Vardaman said.

During the hearing, Summers noted that while the Legislature still has a method to return someone's voting rights to them, it is a long and often stymied process from the point of asking a lawmaker to file an individual bill, passing that bill through committees, both legislative chambers and finally through the governor.

From 2021 to 2023, according to the Mississippi Legislature website, more than 42 suffrage bills seeking to restore voting rights have been filed in both the Mississippi House and Senate, but all failed. There were also 47 individual requests for suffrage from people seeking their voting rights back from lawmakers, but only seven were approved by both chambers, and they were passed without a signature from Republican Gov. Tate Reeves.

There are currently 49 suffrage bills awaiting action by House and Senate committees that would restore voting rights.

Another speaker, Maurice Clifton, who served more than 20 years in prison for his part in a sale of 6.5 grams of cocaine, said that others simply don't understand what it is like to be incarcerated and lose their right to vote.

"I should have been able to vote while I'm being incarcerated because there are laws that are passed that effect people who are incarcerated every day," Clifton said.

In a press conference after the hearing, Karriem and Summers said that despite the Legislature's efforts in other areas, they will continue to push for legislation to return voting rights to people previously convicted with disenfranchising felonies.

"It is evident that voter rights remain a pressing and complex issue in our state," Karriem said. "The legacy of voter suppression is rooted in historic injustices in the 1890 constitution that disenfranchises individuals convicted of certain crimes continues to rest and cast a shadow over our democracy. Felony disenfranchisement affects thousands of individuals in Mississippi today, denying them the right to participate in the democratic process. While there have been discussions about lifting the voting ban for some now nonviolent felons this session, recent rejection of such measures highlights the challenges we face in advancing voting rights legislation. Restoring voting rights is not merely a political matter, it is a fundamental human rights issue. The right to vote is the cornerstone of our democracy."

Grant McLaughlin covers state government for the Clarion Ledger. He can be reached at [email protected] or 972-571-2335.

This article originally appeared on Mississippi Clarion Ledger: MS lawmakers still want to pass voting rights legislation for felons