Fighting for Voting Rights
Recent Kent School of Social Work students Angela Kruessel and Constance Keener found the government not always amenable to ex-felons trying to restore their voting rights.
It was 1981. Allen Barnett was pushing 50 when a bank robbery and shootout with police in Frankfort, Ky., led to his felony conviction and a sentence of life plus 20 years.
"I figured I'd die in prison, so whatever I did after that didn't mater," Barnett says.
Shuttled among several state correctional facilities during his 15 years in jail, Barnett says he went through phases of hope and despair, finding God or becoming a revolutionary and troublemaker.
Sent into lockdown for various offenses, he decided to read and improve himself. In prison he organized groups to help fellow inmates and even wrote a play, Can You Accept a Change? that provided a message of hope when it was performed by a cast of prisoners at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in LaGrange, Ky., in 1991.
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Allen Barnett
Eventually Barnett was paroled then released from the system entirely in 1996.
"I was out five years when a friend asked me about getting my citizenship and voting rights restored," Barnett recalls. "That's something I never thought about before. I never thought voting meant anything or did anything for me."
Many ex-felons like Barnett find few sympathetic ears and little help when it comes to restoring rights lost after conviction, says Angela Kruessel, a 2005 graduate of U of L's Kent School of Social Work. She now works as a researcher in the office of Kent professor Anita Barbee. Before graduation, Kruessel interned at the Louisville office of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) while doing her voting-rights research.
"In three states, including Kentucky, former felons are disenfranchised; not allowed to vote," Kruessel says. "In fact, Kentucky's constitution states that ex-felons can only reinstate their citizenship rights--including the right to vote--only with a pardon by the governor."
According to the website of a national voting-rights advocacy group, The Sentencing Project, an estimated 3.9 million Americans are barred from voting, including more than 1 million who have fully served their prison sentences.
Although there is a procedure to restoring voting rights in Kentucky, many voting rights advocates say it is draconian and unduly restrictive.
Kentucky's Gov. Ernie Fletcher recently added more clauses to the rules, including a requirement of three letters of reference and a written statement explaining why the applicant wanted his or her voting rights restored.
Kruessel and the ACLU oppose such measures, believing that prisoners who've paid their dues to society and served their time should have their basic citizenship rights automatically restored, as occurs in some states.
After submitting paperwork and waiting nine months, Barnett received a certificate in 2002 from Kentucky's then-Gov. Paul Patton declaring his rights of citizenship restored.
"I know a lot of guys now are having more trouble and waiting longer than I did to get their citizenship back," Barnett says. Barnett, now 73, is chair of the prisoner outreach program at the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, a Louisville-based advocacy organization.
Barnett says one problem facing ex-felons is a lack of information about where to go to get back their voting rights.
That common complaint gave Kruessel and fellow Kent student Constance Keener the idea for their graduate research project. They set out to find what probation and parole officers and county clerks knew about the voting restoration process--whether they were giving ex-felons good, bad or no information about it.
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U of L Kent School Social Work graduate and researcher Angela Kruessel talks to Allen Barnett, an ex-felon who won his voting rights back after serving time. Kruessel, Barnett, recent U of L graduate Maria Ramirez, the local ACLU and others are working toward legislation to restore voting rights.
Kruessel and Keener met Barnett during this study. Part of the project involved interviews with ex-prisoners. The other part of the study was a randomly selected survey of 60 county clerks offices and 30 parole and probation officers.
"We basically found that probation and parole officers gave prisoners and ex-prisoners more accurate information about the process of restoring their voting rights than the county clerk officers," Kruessel says.
According to the study, many county clerks' offices express uncertainty and confusion about Kentucky's voting-restoration procedures for former felons.
"This is surprising," Kruessel explains, "because the county clerk's office is a place ex-felons should be able to get the forms to help them start the process. Many of the respondents said they didn't have the form or didn't know where to get it. Many of them would refer people elsewhere, telling them to call the local courthouse or call Frankfort."
"Our research was about what people had to go through to get their rights restored," Kruessel says. "What we hope might come out of this is that county clerks receive mandated training to become more familiar with this process."
Kruessel and another recent Kent graduate, Maria Ramirez, are both working with the ACLU as part of its national campaign to promote voting-rights legislation.
"What's great is that our work at U of L isn't just collecting dust on a shelf but is something we're actually able to use as we work on this issue."
