In 2016, North Carolina for Rational Sexual Offense Laws (NCRSOL) was created as a voice calling for a meaningful discussion about the harmful cause and effects of sex offender registries. While most of our members are active registered voters, we often witness an ex post facto of judicial partisanship turning back the clock and taking away voting rights from citizens that ought to have a constitutional right. 

Even as the rising American electorate gains momentum, new regressive laws, rulings, and maneuvers are threatening voting rights without facing the strict scrutiny that would come with an affirmative right to vote in the Constitution. 

In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), stripping the Justice Department of the powers it had for five decades to curb racial discrimination in voting. The Election Assistance Commission was left without commissioners for years and frequently faces bills in Congress that would end its existence entirely. Many schools skip civics education, contributing to the decline in voter turnout in local and primary elections.

Enshrining an explicit right to vote in the Constitution would guarantee the voting rights of every citizen of voting age, ensure that every vote is counted correctly, and defend against attempts to effectively disenfranchise eligible voters. It would empower Congress to enact minimum electoral standards to guarantee a higher degree of legitimacy, inclusivity, and consistency across the nation, and give our courts the authority to keep politicians in check when they try to game the vote for partisan reasons.

The Constitution has been amended 27 times. Excluding the Bill of Rights, 7 of the last 17 constitutional amendments have dealt directly with expanding the franchise and improving the way citizens vote. 

While the U.S. Constitution bans the restriction of voting based on race, sex and age, it does not explicitly and affirmatively state that all U.S. citizens have a right to vote. The Supreme Court ruled in Bush v. Gore in 2000 that citizens do not have the right to vote for electors for president. States control voting policies and procedures, and as a result, we have a patchwork of inconsistent voting rules run independently by 50 states, 3,067 counties and over 13,000 voting districts, all separate and unequal. 

Approximately 5 million Americans convicted of felonies who have already completed their sentences are permanently disenfranchised. Fourteen states do not have an automatic restoration process in place for returning citizens who have completed their sentences. Some states like Florida leave re-enfranchisement decisions to the discretion of public officials, discretion which could be exercised arbitrarily or used for political gain.

However, it is not only ex-felons who face difficulty registering to vote. Americans living overseas have trouble registering in their home district, because their state may not consider them residents anymore. Many college students attempting to register at their college precinct have faced voter intimidation or were simply refused the ability to register to vote. Such obstacles are not only arbitrary, but in many cases politically motivated.

A Right to Vote Amendment will guarantee all American citizens at least 18 years of age a constitutionally protected individual right to vote. Much like the rights to speech and religion, a constitutionally protected right to vote will be difficult to limit without showing a strong need for the limitation to exist.

Voting should be a simple process in which any registered citizen can easily participate. However, this is not always the case. Voter identification and registration requirements, as well as the machines that voters use, vary widely between states. States and counties design their own ballots, pursue their own voter education, and have near-complete authority over their state voting policies and procedures. With over 10,000 different jurisdictions, voters and potential voters are much more likely to cast a counted vote in some states, some counties, and some areas of the country than others, simply based on the difference in standards for each election. Elections in many states are rife with lost and incorrectly counted votes, and many voters are incorrectly told that they cannot cast a ballot. 

Since voting is regulated by the states, there is little the national government can do if voters are intimidated or harassed at the polling booth. With the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision to strike down section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, and Congress’s unwillingness to act to restore key components of the Act, a Right to Vote Amendment is needed to further enforce voting rights.

At present, Congress can take no action to formally help improve voting standards across the nation. While the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, which passed in response to the voting fiasco of the 2000 presidential elections, does establish some standards including a provisional ballot, states are not required to follow these policies. The only way to ensure that every vote is counted and that electors follow the will of the people of their state is to create a constitutionally protected right to vote. The Right to Vote Amendment will give Congress the authority to protect the individual right to vote and oversee voting policies and procedures to ensure that elections are fair, accurate and efficient.

In 2017, U.S. House Members Mark Pocan, among a number of other co-sponsors, has shown great leadership in introducing House Joint Resolution 74 (H.J. Res. 74), a bill that would establish an explicit right to vote in the Constitution. However, the bill died without ever having a chance to move forward. Congress has a duty to protect the democracy of all Americans by creating constitutional amendment that allows voting rights for all. It should read something similar to this: 

SECTION 1. Every citizen of the United States, who is of legal voting age, shall have the fundamental right to vote in any public election held in the jurisdiction in which the citizen resides.

SECTION 2. Congress shall have the power to enforce and implement this article by appropriate legislation.

Only with a constitutional amendment with easy-to-read language will citizens and the courts understand that we can finally put who can or cannot vote to rest. 

ACADEMIC PAPERS

• The International Status of the Right to Vote, by Alexander Kirshner, provides an overview of the right to vote in countries around the world and how laws are interpreted
• The political and organizational dynamics of constitutional suffrage movements in U.S. history: The experience behind the 15th, 19th, 23rd, 24th and 26th amendments, by Alex Keyssar, Kennedy School of Government 
• Election Reform and the Right to Vote, by Anita S. Earls, Director of Advocacy, UNC Center For Civil Rights, explains the limits of HAVA and what Congress can do to establish a right to vote.
• A Right To Vote Amendment To The Constitution: Confronting America’s Structural Democracy Deficit, by Jamie Raskin, Professor of Law, American University, Washington College of Law – Includes a discussion of the impact of states constitutional provisions of the right to vote; impact of different formulations of the right-to-vote amendment; and whether a right to vote vote amendment might provide a legal means to pursue reforms such as election day registration.
• A legislative and national political strategy for a right-to-vote amendment during the 2004 presidential election and beyond, by Steve Cobble, Institute for Policy Studies
• The Constitutional Right to Vote, by Ron Walters calls for a right to vote amendment by detailing the problems that minorities faced in the last election.
• Why Americans Need a Constitutional Right to Vote for Presidential Electors, by Demetrios James Caraley, discusses the legal implications of a system that does not constitutionally guarantee the right to vote.

HISTORY OF THE RIGHT TO VOTE

Throughout the history of the United States, voting rights have been expanded repeatedly by Constitutional Amendments and legislation. When the Constitution was written, most of the Framers did not believe in universal suffrage. However, as we have progressed as a society, traditionally disenfranchised groups, including women and racial minorities, have received voting rights through Constitutional Amendments. Of the 17 Amendments ratified since the Bill of Rights in 1791, seven have expanded voter eligibility or increased democratic participation. Enshrining an affirmative Right to Vote in the Constitution would be one more step toward universal suffrage and equal voting rights for all.

JACOB SULLUM — This Sunday marks the 20th anniversary of Smith v. Doe, a Supreme Court decision that approved the retroactive application of Alaska’s sex offender registry, deeming it preventive rather than punitive. That ruling helped propagate several pernicious myths underlying a policy that every state has adopted without regard to its justice or effectiveness.

Writing for the majority in Smith, Justice Anthony Kennedy took it for granted that collecting and disseminating information about people convicted of sex offenses made sense as a public safety measure. But that premise was always doubtful.

The vast majority of sexual assaults, especially against children, are committed by relatives, friends, or acquaintances, and the perpetrators typically do not have prior sex-offense convictions. That means they would not show up on a registry even if someone bothered to check.

It is therefore not surprising that research finds little evidence to support Kennedy’s assumption that publicly accessible registries protect potential victims. Summarizing the evidence in a 2016 National Affairs article, Eli Lehrer noted that “virtually no well-controlled study shows any quantifiable benefit from the practice of notifying communities of sex offenders living in their midst.”

To reinforce the logic of registries, Kennedy averred that “the risk of recidivism posed by sex offenders is ‘frightening and high.'” He was quoting his own opinion in an earlier case, which in turn relied on an unsubstantiated estimate from a source who has publicly and repeatedly disavowed it.

According to Kennedy’s paraphrase, “the rate of recidivism of untreated offenders has been estimated to be as high as 80%.” By contrast, a 2003 Bureau of Justice Statistics study found that the three-year recidivism rate for sex offenders was 3.5 percent.

Studies covering longer periods find higher recidivism rates but still nothing remotely like 80 percent, even for high-risk offenders. Despite its empirical emptiness, Kennedy’s “frightening and high” claim has been quoted again and again in legal briefs and judicial opinions across the country.

Although registries are ostensibly based on the risk of recidivism, they apply indiscriminately to broad classes of people, even when there is little reason to think they pose an ongoing danger. Dissenting in Smith, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted that Alaska’s law “applies to all convicted sex offenders, without regard to their future dangerousness.”

One of the men who challenged Alaska’s law, Ginsburg pointed out, “successfully completed a treatment program” and “gained early release on supervised probation in part because of his compliance with the program’s requirements and his apparent low risk of reoffense.” A court determined that “he had been successfully rehabilitated,” based partly on “psychiatric evaluations” indicating that he had “a very low risk of re-offending” and was “not a pedophile.”

That man nevertheless was required to renew his registration four times a year for the rest of his life. The online registry included his name, photograph, criminal record, address, physical description, date of birth, and place of employment, along with the license plate numbers of vehicles he used.

Hosted by Dwayne Daughtry, Executive Director

7:00 PM – 8:00 PM Wednesday, February 24, 2021 (UTC-04:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)

Meeting Information

Meeting link:

⁨https://ncrsol.my.webex.com/ncrsol.my/j.php?MTID=mc33f066ed7bc72207eefc83f79651976⁩

Agenda:

• Welcome new NCRSOL members and visitors
• North Carolina litigation & legislation update (Senate Bill 52)
• Questions & Answer session

NARSOL Board of Directors member Richard Earl sent a message to conference planning teams, “the conference is going ahead as planned.” While some members of the planning groups appeared concerned with the growing uncertainty of how the pandemic could potentially alter the conference, NARSOL leadership is optimistic that the conference will be held.

A positive mention is that airfare could not be more of a bargain at this particular time. The cost of a roundtrip airfare ticket has significantly dropped because of struggling airlines and the plummeting price of jet fuel. As of the time of this reporting roundtrip airfare during the conference time frame from Houston, Texas, to Raleigh-Durham starts at $79. Additionally, other services such as rental cars and hotel rooms are attempting to pull out all the stops to capture any customer it can acquire.

For more information about the NARSOL 2020 Conference, please click here.

Wilmington, NC

Under a low-hanging gray sky Wednesday morning, Randy Evans dished out eggs and doled out biscuits to about two dozen unsheltered people under a pavilion near the foot of Market Street in downtown Wilmington.

As people sat down to eat at the pavilion’s square wooden tables, conversations inevitably turned to the gradual approach of Hurricane Dorian, just as they did over breakfasts across this port city. One man, who did not want to be identified, told Evans he didn’t want to go to a pet-friendly shelter because his dog would get too stressed out in that environment.

Evans, the founder of advocacy group Walking Tall Wilmington, said, “They’re survivors. They’re going to survive and they’re going to thrive in spite of a hurricane. But that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be acknowledged.”

In New Hanover County, workers at shelters ask for identification, but ID isn’t required to gain admission. During Hurricane Florence, the initial request for identification caused confusion and resulted in about three dozen people staying at Evans’ home, many of whom did not have or did not want to produce ID. Many of those same people lost tarps, tents or personal belongings during last year’s storm.

For instance, Terry Mangum’s spot in a forest was disrupted by trees felled by Florence. The place where he has pitched his tent now, Mangum said, has two trees leaning at precarious angles that could fall in storm-force winds.

“If they don’t, then I’m going to get a chainsaw and take them down myself just in case we get another one,” Mangum said. “There’s two more out there they say, behind this one.”

Mangum added that he was supposed to see his long-estranged daughter for the first time in 18 years this past weekend, but plans were canceled due to the storm’s approach and his need to prepare.

As of Wednesday morning, Mangum was unsure if he would leave his tent to head to a shelter, in part because his 7-year-old dog doesn’t like many people.

“If the winds aren’t all that bad, I’ll just stay out there where I’m at. But then when you see the trees start going six foot one side and six foot to the other side, it’s kind of iffy… Pine trees snap halfway, especially if they are not all that big,” Mangum said.

NO ID REQUIRED

Randy Evans has provided six meals a week to the city’s unsheltered, including breakfast on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. As people arrived one-by-one or in pairs Wednesday, Evans handed them plastic bags containing some provisions, including almonds, beef jerky sticks, fruit cups and tuna salad.

When one woman told him she needed another package for her husband, Evans said, “Your husband, who’s your husband? When did you get married? … Oh, you mean your boyfriend.”

A block away from where breakfast was served, a crew was placing boards over windows at Front Street Brewery’s storefront. Throughout Wednesday, more boards went up along Front Street in the city’s downtown area.

Wednesday afternoon, New Hanover County officials said there were 19 people at Blair Elementary School and another 61 at Codington Elementary School.

Beth Schrader, New Hanover County’s chief strategy officer, said if someone doesn’t have identification, the shelter will ask them for their name and an address, recording that information. Personnel then compare that to an updated list of sex offenders in the area.

“We are not requiring IDs and that is not a change,” Schrader said. “We ask for IDs, but we do not require it.”

Should a sex offender try to enter a shelter, a deputy from the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office will take them aside, Schrader said, and offer them a location in the New Hanover County Jail, away from inmates.

Schrader also said efforts were still being made Wednesday afternoon to inform people of the anticipated risk from Dorian’s storm surge.

Volunteers with the New Hanover County Disaster Relief Coalition were teaming up with New Hanover County Fire Department personnel Wednesday afternoon to go door-to-door in neighborhoods where flooding was expected, while the county was making reverse 911 calls to at-risk locations.

Evans planned to serve lunch Thursday night and try to convince people to head to a shelter. Then he will hunker down for Dorian before returning to serve dinner Saturday.

“That’ll be kind of my last-ditch effort to get people there,” Evans said.

SOURCE: The News&Observer Online

Over the last several years my voice has started to return.  I found a renewed spirit, pushing me to advocate for fair laws. This is way out of my comfort zone.  But I am a citizen, I am a voter, and I am entitled to laws which are fair to everyone.  Unfortunately, the registry laws are not fair to everyone.  One of the most frustrating things I have experienced is the feeling that I, as an individual, am not important to lawmakers.  That I as an individual don’t deserve to be heard.  That the only way I will get anywhere is if I am supported by an advocacy group.  Everyone has a story, everyone has opinions.  I challenge you to join NCRSOL so that our lawmakers will hear you, too.  I wish I could tell you that they would listen to you as a stand-alone individual, but generally that is not the case.  My very first call to a lawmaker’s office included the question, “What group are you with?”  My naïve answer was, “Group?  I am an individual citizen.”  Needless to say, I got nowhere and the lawmaker would not speak with me.  That’s just one example but there have been many more.  I still encourage you to advocate as an individual, but I also encourage you to join a group.  We deserve to be heard.

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Be a change agent…