Voting rights and criminal justice reform advocates are rallying support behind a proposed state law aimed at eliminating a 147-year-old provision of the Georgia constitution that experts say was created to limit Black people’s access to the ballot box.
The measure known as SB 179 and a companion resolution are the latest attempt by Georgia Democrats to end felony disenfranchisement in the state by changing a section of the state constitution along with related statutes that restrict voting rights for people found guilty of felonies involving “moral turpitude.”
The term “moral turpitude” generally applies to felony convictions, though it isn’t clearly defined in Georgia law. It became a common clause in Southern state constitutions after the Reconstruction Era, when Black men had gained the right to vote via the 15th Amendment.
Felony disenfranchisement is an issue that impacts Black residents in Georgia at roughly three times the rate of their white counterparts, according to The Sentencing Project, an advocacy group working to end mass incarceration in the U.S.
East Atlanta resident Dominique Harris says he supports SB 179 because he’s tired of enduring taxation without representation, much like the late 18th-century U.S. patriots involved in the Boston Tea Party.
Harris is a 34-year-old single dad who pays taxes through his job as an outreach coordinator for the Georgia Justice Project, a nonprofit that helps formerly incarcerated people get back on their feet, start careers and restore their voting rights.
He’s also one of an estimated 356,000 people on probation or parole in Georgia who may be barred from casting ballots in an election until their full sentence is complete.
For Harris, that means he’s not allowed to help choose his own elected leaders until 2028, even though he completed his 12-year prison sentence in 2020. It’s been about 16 years since Harris was convicted of armed robbery in 2008, the first year he was eligible to vote.
In the years since, he was either incarcerated or prohibited from voting in the elections of Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden, Georgia Governors Sonny Perdue, Nathan Deal, and Brian Kemp, and dozens of other local and statewide officeholders who have passed countless policies impacting Harris and his family members.
“I was 18, but I was still a child,” Harris said during a recent phone interview. “My debt to society is paid. Why shouldn’t I be allowed to participate in democracy?”
Both SB 179 and the issue it addresses are set to receive a state Senate Ethics Committee hearing at 11 a.m. Wednesday, March 6, according to state Sen. Josh McLaurin, D-Sandy Springs, who filed the measure on Feb. 14.
McLaurin said he doesn’t expect Republicans, who have majority control in both of Georgia’s legislative chambers, will join him in passing SB 179 this year. Spokespersons for Republicans in the Georgia Senate have not responded to a request for comment for this story as of publication time.
Electoral politics might account for McLaurin’s belief that Republicans won’t get behind the bill. Behind the scenes, Georgia Democrats envision a day in the near future when a two-decade inflow of diverse, left-leaning new residents into the state might give them a chance to wrest control of the Gold Dome from Republicans. Restoring voting rights to the formerly incarcerated — including the 5.2% of voting-age Black Georgians who The Sentencing Project reports as currently disenfranchised — could help hasten that competitiveness to the extent that Black voters tend to vote Democratic.
Still, McLaurin hopes the soon-to-be scheduled hearing on his bill could lay the foundation for eliminating felony disenfranchisement.
“The only way that I could see this majority moving ahead with this policy in the near future would be if we keep walking down the road that we’re tentatively on now, which is agreeing to have a conversation, opening hearts on both sides of the issue to just hearing the other side’s concerns,” McLaurin said during a recent phone interview.
He also challenged supporters of restoring full voting rights to the formerly incarcerated to contact their state lawmakers and tell them to support SB 179, saying GOP legislators may be swayed by members of the public who address them before and during the hearing.
“[We need to take] the courageous leap that civil rights movements across time have asked us to take, which is to see the people out of power as human,” he said.
Harris said some other formerly incarcerated Black Georgians he’s encountered in recent months have told him that they aren’t as excited to vote in this year’s presidential election as they have been in years past. That’s largely due to dissatisfaction with the leading candidates, President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and voter fatigue, he said.
Harris said he responds to that frustration by reminding people that some officials wouldn’t work to limit voting rights if voting didn’t matter. It’s something Harris wishes he could do this year.
“As I’ve educated myself and learned more, I understand [voting] is the only way you can change anything,” he said.
