In Alabama, a grassroots coalition works to register voters behind bars

As Facing South has previously reported, civil rights groups and other advocacy organizations have been working to register ex-felons and to educate the greater public around felony disenfranchisement laws. In Alabama, a grassroots coalition began registering voters in the most unlikely of places-inside state prisons, reports Alternet.

According to Alternet, a voter registration drive led last week by Rev. Kenny Glasgow, of the Alabama-based The Ordinary People's Society, began registering prisoners to vote to cast absentee ballots, a right guaranteed under Alabama's State Constitution. The drive was originally embraced by the commissioner of corrections in Alabama, but it was stopped due to pressure from Alabama Republican Party.

As Alternet reports:

In Alabama, nearly 250,000 people have been stripped of their right to vote due to a felony conviction. But, in a 2006 court ruling which was the result of a lawsuit by Ryan Haygood of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, a judge found that only those persons convicted of felonies of "moral turpitude" lose their right to vote. The judge found that certain felonies -- such as drug possession -- do not constitute crimes of moral turpitude and, therefore, individuals convicted of those crimes do not lose their voting rights, even during incarceration.

In Alabama, more than 50,000 people convicted of felonies falling outside the "moral turpitude" definition have been wrongly denied their right to vote, or believe they lost that right due to a felony conviction, reports Alternet, adding that:

While drug use is proportionally equal across all racial lines, African Americans are incarcerated for drug crimes at much higher rates than whites. Blacks make up only 26 percent of Alabama's population but are nearly 60 percent of the prison population. And, for every white person in an Alabama jail, there are about four black people.