Given my post the other day about how much better voting in Iowa was than voting in Texas, I’d be remiss if I didn’t link to this article from the ACLU, “I was arrested for voting.”
When I was convicted on a nonviolent drug charge in 2008, my defense attorney told me that once I served my probation, I would regain my right to vote automatically – correct information at the time. But Gov. Terry Branstad suddenly changed the rules in 2011, and now all citizens with a felony conviction lose their voting rights for life. Our Secretary of State Matt Schultz, in fact, has made this subversion of democracy a point of pride. He has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars hunting down and prosecuting people with past convictions who unknowingly registered or cast a vote.
Considering how successful disenfranchisement tactics have been, I suppose it’s unsurprising that a state with a Republican Governor has been instituting some of them.