Mississippi legislators advanced bills Monday to give voting rights back to 32 people convicted of felonies
, weeks after a Senate leader killed a broader bill that would have restored suffrage to many more people with criminal records. The move is necessary due to Mississippi's piecemeal approach to restoring voting rights to people convicted of felony offenses who have paid their debts to society. It also reflects the legacy of the state’s original list of disenfranchising crimes, which springs from the Jim Crow era.
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. In 1950, Mississippi dropped burglary from the list of disenfranchising crimes. Murder and rape were added in 1968. Attorneys representing the state in one lawsuit argued that those changes “cured any discriminatory taint,” and the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals court agreed in 2022.
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