Nearly 18 million of the 23 million Americans with felony convictions should be able to vote right now, if they just understood their rights.
On National Voter Registration Day, Campaign Legal Center launched RecupereSuVoto.org, the Spanish language version of RestoreYourVote.org: an online toolkit to help citizens with past felony convictions understand their options for exercising the right to vote in all 50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico.
Despite being only 16% of the U.S. adult population, Hispanic-Americans make up 23% of the U.S. prison population. RecupereSuVoto.org will make voting rights information easily accessible to the millions of Americans who speak Spanish.
CLC launched RestoreYourVote.org in August of 2018, with the goal of helping visitors navigate voting rights restoration processes across the country and breaking down the false notion that a felony conviction always means you cannot vote.
Since its launch, nearly 70,000 people have visited RestoreYourVote.org seeking to learn more about voting rights restoration in their state.
Felony disenfranchisement laws vary widely by state and the rights restoration process can be difficult and confusing. Even in states with less restrictive laws, many people remain unaware of their rights, as states often make no attempt to educate citizens with past felony convictions on their ability to vote after they have paid their debt to society.
This was the case for Dennis Eckhoff: “After my time was served and probationary conditions were met, there were zero resources provided to help me understand my voter registration eligibility... After more than a decade of fruitless searching, I found the basic education I had been seeking from a Twitter post referencing voting rights restoration that led me to RestoreYourVote.org. I chose my state and answered a handful of “Yes” or “No” questions, and was told that I could indeed vote.”
In addition to the launch of RestoreYourVote.org and RecupereSuVoto.org, CLC has hired and trained on-the-ground organizers in states with particularly complicated rights restoration laws.
CLC organizers have directly assisted more than 5,000 people with past felony convictions with their voting rights, and empowered thousands of community leaders with a better understanding of rights restoration laws in their states.
At CLC, we know that democracy works best when all citizens can vote without barriers, and that those who have paid their debt to society deserve a second chance. That is why we are fighting – in the courts and on-the-ground – to ensure that Americans with past felony convictions can vote and have their voices heard in the political process.
The launch of RecupereSuVoto.org has been covered by a number of media organizations including El Sentinel Orlando and Latina Lista.
Learn more about CLC’s voting rights restoration work.
This post was written by Sheely Edwards, a 2019 CLC Hinckley intern, and student at the University of Utah.