JACKSON, Miss.— Although Albert Donelson spent time in prison for committing multiple crimes, he still has the right to vote in Mississippi—unlike thousands of others. He now uses his platform as a radio-show host on WMPR 90.1 to educate listeners about felony disenfranchisement in Mississippi, under which people convicted of certain crimes lose their right to vote for life, even after serving their time.
Mississippians convicted of any of the following 23 crimes are disenfranchised for life without legislative intervention: voter fraud, rape, statutory rape, murder, bribery, theft, carjacking, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, forgery, embezzlement, bigamy, armed robbery, extortion, larceny, felony bad check, felony shoplifting, receiving stolen goods, robbery, timber larceny, motor vehicle theft, and larceny under lease or rental agreement.
But Mississippi does not take away the right to vote for all people with criminal convictions; some people convicted of crimes not on the list, which dates back to a Jim Crow-era law, can even vote while incarcerated.
While in prison, Donelson said he heard “whispers” of inmates wanting to vote, but the prison authorities never gave them the chance to cast a ballot.
“When I was in prison, we had this discussion, but it was like more of a whisper to each other,” he said at the Right to Restore 2024 panel on Aug. 27. “It was more, we talked about, ‘You know, we can vote in prison. This can help the race that’s outside in society.’ But we never really thought that it was real because when we went to ask the authorities about everything, you could never get the assistance you needed to get the vote out.”
Under state law, inmates who have not been convicted of one of the disenfranchising crimes are supposed to be allowed to cast an absentee ballot.
Donelson began advocating for helping incarcerated people vote and urging the government to restore voting rights for formerly incarcerated people.
“If they’ve been out of prison and been a productive citizen and been positive and been an asset to the community, to the city, why shouldn’t they have their vote back?” Donelson said.
Challenges From The Past Still Present Today
We Must Vote, a voter-resource group, hosted the Right to Restore 2024 conversation around felony disenfranchised voting in Mississippi on Aug. 27 in Jackson, Miss., to raise awareness for efforts to restore voting rights for formerly incarcerated people.
Mississippi started systemically disenfranchising the votes of incarcerated people in 1890 after ratifying its Jim Crow Constitution to include crimes that white Mississippi leaders thought only the new Black freedmen would commit, Capital Defense Attorney Lenderrick Taylor said.
“And since that time frame, we still face that challenge today. Even though our constitution has been ratified several times, they still suppress our vote through disenfranchisement,” he said on Aug. 27.
James K. Vardaman, who later became a governor and U.S. senator, was one of the drafters of Mississippi’s 1890 Constitution. After its adoption, he explained the goal: “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 n–ger from politics. Not the ‘ignorant and vicious’, as some of the apologists would have you believe, but the n–ger.”
At another point, he said he was “opposed to the n–ger’s voting” because, he claimed, no Black person “is fit to perform the supreme functions of citizenship.” Despite the racist origins of Mississippi’s felony-disenfranchisement law, the conservative-dominated 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld it earlier this year.
Mississippi is one of 13 states that has a lifetime voting ban for people convicted of disenfranchising crimes that bars them from voting for life whether they are actively in prison or have completed their sentence.
The Mississippi Legislature can restore voting rights to disenfranchised voters by filing a restoration bill for an individual person; if the Legislature approves the bill, the governor can sign it into law and restore an individual’s voting rights. But since 1997, the state has only restored voting rights for about 200 people.
Rep. Karriem Pushes Voting Restoration Legislation
Mississippi House Rep. Kabir Karriem, D-Columbus, led unsuccessful efforts in the 2024 legislative session to pass a bill that would restore voting rights for formerly incarcerated people convicted of nonviolent crimes and to expunge their records.
“It could have helped over 40,000 Mississippians restore their rights back if that bill would have passed,” he said on Aug. 27.
But Karriem was successful in his efforts to pass a bill that would codify incarcerated people’s right to be able to vote while in jail or prison. Incarcerated people not convicted of the 23 disenfranchising crimes have had the right to vote under Mississippi’s Constitution, but the bill ensures they have access to absentee ballots while in jail or prison. House Bill 1406 became law without Gov. Tate Reeves’ signature on May 14, mandating that incarcerated people convicted of non-disenfranchising crimes can vote via absentee ballot.
“I’m not going to support any legislation that’s going to add to the disenfranchising crimes. If anything, we need to be taking some of these crimes off,” Karriem said.
The Mississippi Constitution directly names 10 crimes that disenfranchise voters: murder, rape, bribery, theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, forgery, embezzlement and bigamy. Former Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood added 11 other crimes to the list in 2004 based on a 1998 ruling of the 5th U.S. Circuit of Appeals that approved those additional disenfranchising crimes. Karriem said Hood later added carjacking and voter fraud to the disenfranchisement list when Karriem was serving in the Mississippi House of Representatives.
“These (13) disenfranchising crimes have not been codified. We have not voted on this. They just added it,” Karriem said.
Karriem said he wanted to restore voting rights for nonviolent formerly incarcerated people through a new bill in the 2025 legislative session. He said he planned to speak with Republican Mississippi House Speaker Rep. Jason White in hopes that he will have discussions with Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Gov. Tate Reeves.
“We can’t give up. We have to keep pushing, even if we have to take baby steps. We didn’t pass it this year; we’re going to turn around and do it next year,” Karriem told the Mississippi Free Press on Aug. 27.