Democratic Lawmakers Want Oregon to Become Third State to Allow People Incarcerated for Felonies to Vote

April 4 was the second weeding-out deadline for bills in the current legislative session. Now only legislation that has serious backing remains for the final couple of months.

One low-profile bill that made the cut: Senate Bill 579, which would give people incarcerated for felony convictions the right to vote while behind bars. It would give the more than 12,000 Oregonians the right to vote as residents of the last county they lived in prior to being convicted of a felony.

Currently, only Maine, Vermont and Puerto Rico grant adults in custody the right to vote.

The chief sponsors of the bill include the three Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, chair Floyd Prozanski (D-Eugene), Sara Gelser Blouin (D-Corvallis) and James Manning (D-Eugene). The bill passed out of their committee in March on a party-line vote and now rests with the Joint Ways and Means Committee.

The bill enjoys the support of more than 50 organizations, and many of them, including the Coalition of Communities of Color, the League of Women Voters, Common Cause Oregon, the ACLU of Oregon, and the Urban League of Portland, testified in support, as did the Oregon Department of Justice.

“Disenfranchisement of individuals convicted of felonies, whether in or out of custody, is inconsistent with the present values of our state,” testified DOJ’s Kimberly McCullough. “It is time to right this wrong.”

The question for Democrats, who hold hefty majorities in both chambers, is whether they have the stomach for the inevitable attack ads that would run during their reelection campaigns in swing districts, where voters can sometimes be swayed by a tough-on-crime message.