Mississippi legislators won’t smooth the path this year to restore voting rights after some felonies

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Kenneth Almons says he began a 23-year sentence in a Mississippi prison just two weeks after graduating from high school, and one of his felony convictions — for armed robbery — stripped away voting rights that he still has not regained decades later.

Now 51, Almons told lawmakers Wednesday that he has worked hard and remained law-abiding since his release, and he wants to be able to vote.

“It would mean I am no longer considered a nobody,” Almons said. “Because when you don’t have a voice, you’re nobody.”

Mississippi is among the 26 states that remove voting rights from people for criminal convictions, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Mississippi’s original list of disenfranchising crimes springs from the Jim Crow era, and attorneys who have sued to challenge the list say authors of the state constitution removed voting rights for crimes they thought Black people were more likely to commit.

Under the Mississippi Constitution, people lose the right to vote for 10 felonies, including bribery, theft and arson. The state’s previous attorney general, a Democrat, issued a ruling in 2009 that expanded the list to 22 crimes, including timber larceny and carjacking.

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