Parolees Will Be Able To Vote Under Cuomo's New Order

NEW YORK, NY — Some 35,000 New Yorkers on parole will soon be able to vote again. Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order Wednesday that could open up the ballot box to previously disenfranchised parolees.

The order says Cuomo will consider a conditional pardon for every current and future parolee that would immediately restore their voting rights. The move circumvents state law, which bars people convicted of felonies from voting until they've completed their parole or prison sentence.

"This reform will reduce disenfranchisement and will help restore justice and fairness to our democratic process," Cuomo, a Democrat, said in a statement. "Withholding or delaying voting rights diminishes our democracy."

Cuomo's order directs the state's corrections commissioner to compile a list of all the state's current parolees and, starting May 1, submit a monthly list of everyone released from prison on parole in the past month. Each name on those lists will be reviewed before pardons are granted.

New York joins 14 other states and the District of Columbia in restoring voting rights for people released from prison. The disenfranchisement of parolees disporportionately impacted people of color — 71 percent of New Yorkers currently on parole are black or Hispanic, according to Cuomo's office.

Cuomo said he took action after the state Legislature declined to pass legislation he had proposed to restore voting rights to parolees. The governor did not mention the policy in this year's State of the State address or his 2019 budget proposal.

The Brennan Center for Justice, a progressive group that has long advocated for voting reforms, praised Cuomo's move as a step toward undoing policies rooted in a racist desire to stop black people from casting ballots.

"Governor Cuomo’s actions today will reaffirm a fundamental truth: that discriminatory disenfranchisement laws have no place in our society," Myrna Pérez, the deputy director of the Brennan Center’s democracy program, said in a statement.

But the actress Cynthia Nixon, Cuomo's Democratic primary challenger, cast the move as the governor's latest attempt to look more progressive than he's been. Her campaign pointed to a 2016 Brennan Center article that said Cuomo, at the time, had not "mentioned rights restoration as a legislative priority."

"We don't buy the Governor's new song-and-dance routine," Nixon said in a statement. "Voter suppression in New York should have ended eight years ago, from the rights of parolees to access to early voting and automatic registration."

(Lead image: Photo by roibu/Shutterstock)