The Democracy Restoration Act was recently introduced by Senator Russ Feingold-WI, member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, as well as Representative John Conyers and Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.  Feingold's statement on the bill can be found here.

In his released statement Feingold accredits the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU and the Sentencing Project for their research on the effects this legislation will have:

According to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and the Sentencing Project, 5.3 million American citizens are not allowed to vote because of a felony conviction. Nearly four million people who are disenfranchised are no longer, or never were, in prison, and approximately two million have completed their entire sentence, including probation and parole. Right now, a felony conviction can result in permanent disenfranchisement in ten states. In 35 other states, convicted offenders cannot vote while on parole and in 30 of those 35, people on probation are disenfranchised as well.

The legislation proposed by Feingold and Conyers  has found bi-partisan support in the form of Jack Kemp, former Republican Presidential and Vice Presidential candidate, Congressman,  and Bush 1 Housing Secretary.  In an op-ed Feingold and Kemp point out that the law restores the right to vote to citizens much like ourselves who work hard and obey the law.  Their debt to society has been fulfilled.

For a nation that depends on the participation of its citizens, it is fundamentally un-American to deny the vote to people who are living and working as law-abiding citizens. Furthermore, the more doors we close on people trying to rejoin society, the more likely it is we will drive them back to the behaviors we want them to leave behind.

The disenfranchisement has the greatest effect on African-American men.  Kemp and Feingold continue with statistics from the Brennan Center,

Nationwide, 13 percent of all African-American men are disenfranchised; in some states, it is almost 25 percent. Like the poll tax and the grandfather clause, civil death was a tool of Jim Crow.

"Civil death" is not a term to toss around lightly.  Yet given that many are not allowed to vote for life, such as in Virginia, how can it be called otherwise?  Even those not given a life sentence of being denied a fundamental right are stillfaced with being civilly "suspended" for months, years, and decades, if not their lifetime, while waiting for this basic right to be restored.  In a strong democracy unafraid of the voices of it's citizenry no one should have to feel as though they are "dead" as a citizen.  No fundamental rights should be denied after a debt to society has been paid.  How could one ever hope for true rehabilitation if the opposite is true?

Perhaps, Feingold stated it best in his floor statement,

The rest of us should be ashamed, and yes, outraged. If we believe in redemption, we should be outraged. Because civil death has denied four million Americans a chance at redemption. If we believe in progress, we should be outraged. Because civil death keeps this country chained to the worst moments of our past. If we believe in democracy, we should be outraged. Because civil death strikes at the heart of our democracy.

Erika Wood goes into some details of the effects on this civil death and its history on elections in her article here.  

The continuing laws reflect a past stretching back to our countries worst and to Jim Crow.  Jim Crow being a response to the end of slavery.  Wood likens it to other laws passed in that time, legal barriers placed to continue treatment of African-Americans as second-class citizens.  The laws date to the late 1800s in response to Reconstruction.  The right to vote being suspended or voided for convicted felons being the tip of the iceberg.

The legal barriers employed -- including literacy tests, residency requirements, grandfather clauses, and poll taxes -- while race-neutral on their face, were intentional barriers to African-American voting.

Racism has no place in America.  Jim Crow no longer has a place in America.  These policies left over from a stained past must be confined to just that- the past and kept there. Jim Crow has no place in the future of America.   To deny that these laws are not effecting the present is also naive.

Wood touches the surface in her piece on the effect voter disenfranchisement has on minority communities to this day.  As she states in her piece,

In the last 25 years, as incarceration rates skyrocketed and African-Americans were sent to prison at a rate seven times that of whites, the political power of minority communities has been decimated. It's a simple equation: communities with high rates of people with felony convictions have fewer votes to cast.

The problem effects not just the ex-felon, but their family, their children, their neighborhood, and their community.  

For more information I would strongly recommend checking out the Brennan Center's website on the Democracy Act here.

In conclusion.  I leave you with some closing thoughts on this legislation from Senator Feingold's floor statement.  Feingold's appeals are Constitutional and go to the core of what makes us American:

This country was founded on the idea that a just government derives its power from the consent of the governed, a principle codified in the very first words of our Constitution: "We the People of the United States." From the Civil War through the women's suffrage movement through the Voting Rights Act of 1965 through the 26th Amendment, the continuing expansion of the franchise, a broadening of who "we the people" are, is one of our great American stories.

Do we not want the best for our fellow citizens?  Do we not want to give even those who have fallen the farthest the chance to get back up, to give them a voice and an equal say in our future?   As Feingold states,

If our country wants ex-offenders to succeed at becoming better citizens, who both abide by the law and act as responsible individuals, then we need to restore this most fundamental right. I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.

I urge you to contact your representatives now and make sure they support this legislation as well.