To sign on your organization, please email the name of your organization to Institute Communications Director Laurie Beacham at lbeacham@njisj.org. 

Dear Governor Phil Murphy, Senate President Steve Sweeney, and Assembly Speaker Craig Coughlin:

We write to ask that you stand with us and take all necessary actions to end New Jersey’s practice of denying the right to vote to people with criminal convictions.

New Jersey currently denies the right to vote to more than 94,000 people serving a sentence for a felony conviction, including people in prison, on parole, and on probation—more people than live in Trenton, New Jersey’s capital city, Camden, Hoboken, Montclair, or over 150 other cities in New Jersey.

Three-quarters of those who have currently lost their voting rights—or 70,000 people—are living in the community while completing a term of parole or probation. New Jersey denies the right to vote to more people with criminal convictions who are living in the community than any other state in the Northeast.

New Jersey first denied voting rights based on criminal convictions in 1844, the same year its constitution restricted the right to vote to white men only.

More than a century and a half later, New Jersey’s law accomplishes the very racial exclusion that was prevalent in 1844, and that was meant to be eradicated by the Fifteenth Amendment, which guarantees that the right to vote cannot be denied on account of race.

Incredibly, today, about half of all disfranchised people in our state are Black, even though Black people make up only about 15 percent of New Jersey’s population. In all, over five percent of New Jersey’s Black voting-age population is denied the right to vote because of a criminal conviction, leading to a significant reduction in Black voting power.

In fact, owing to population increases, the number of Black residents currently denied the right to vote because of a criminal conviction greatly surpasses the number of Black people in New Jersey who were prohibited from voting in the decades prior to the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment.

quarter of those removed from the voter rolls because of a criminal conviction are from Essex and Camden Counties. Just five counties—Essex, Camden, Hudson, Monmouth, and Ocean—are home to almost half of those removed from the rolls. Those same five counties contain 46 percent of the state’s Black population.

These disparities exist because New Jersey’s law ties the right to vote—one of the most fundamental of rights—to a criminal justice system infected with racial discrimination. New Jersey has the shameful distinction of having the highest disparity in Black/white incarceration rates in the nation for both adults and youth—12:1 and more than 30:1, respectively.

Finally, New Jersey’s law serves no legitimate public safety or criminal justice interest. In fact, because voting helps to facilitate rehabilitation and reduce recidivism, New Jersey’s law actually undermines these interests.

It is time for New Jersey to sever the link between voting rights and criminal convictions. New Jersey must eliminate loss of voting rights as a consequence of a criminal conviction and restore voting rights to the 94,000 people in prison, on parole, and on probation who are denied access to the fundamental right that, as the Supreme Court has explained, is preservative of all other rights.

We ask you to join us in taking the steps necessary to erase this moral stain on our democracy. The integrity and legitimacy of our democracy demand an end to this antidemocratic practice.

We are 1844 no more. Let us vote.

Signatories:

Elected Officials:

Mayor Ras Baraka (Newark)
Mayor Ravi S. Bhalla (Hoboken)
Council Member Yvonne Clayton (Asbury Park)
Council Member Matthew Hersh (Highland Park)
Mayor Adrian Mapp (Plainfield)
Governor Jim McGreevey
Mayor Steve Fulop (Jersey City)
Mayor Michael Venezia (Bloomfield)

Organizations

Abbott Leadership Institute
ACLU (National)
ACLU of New Jersey
Action Together New Jersey
Action Together NJ Atlantic & Cape May Counties
African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey
American Friends Service Committee Prison Watch
American Probation and Parole Association
Americans for Prosperity-New Jersey
Anti-Defamation League New Jersey Region
Anti-Poverty Network of NJ
Art is For Everyone LLC
Ballots Over Bars
BCT Partners
Bethel AME Church
Big Brothers Big Sisters of Essex, Hudson & Union Counties
Black Lives Matter Morristown
BlueWaveNJ
Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers
Campaign to End the New Jim Crow, Greater Trenton Area
Carthage Investment Group, LLC
Center for Social Justice at Seton Hall University School of Law
Churches Improving Communities
Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO New Jersey
Daily Kos
Demos
Dominion Behavioral Health, LLC
Drug Policy Alliance
Essex Rising
From The Block 2 The Boardroom
Garden State Bar Association
Gloucester County NAACP
Greater Newark LISC
Green Party of New Jersey
Healing Communities USA
Heart-to-Heart
Hispanic Bar Association of New Jersey
Hudson Civic Action
Independence: A Family of Services
Indivisible Princeton
JOLT USA
LatinoJustice PRLDEF
League of Women Voters of New Jersey
Legit Action
Let People Vote-Mercer County
Lutheran Episcopal Advocacy Ministry of New Jersey
Million Hoodies Movement for Justice
MomsRising
Monarch Housing Associates
Mount Zion AME Church
My Brother’s Keeper Newark
NAACP (national)
NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund
NAACP New Jersey State Conference
National Association of Social Workers-NJ Chapter
National Council of Jewish Women, Essex County
National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence of New Jersey (NCADD-NJ)
National Organization for Women-New Jersey
National Organization for Women-Northern NJ
NeighborCorps Re-Entry Services
New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice
New Jersey Annual Conference Committee on Civic Involvement
New Jersey Association of Black Women Lawyers
New Jersey Association on Correction
New Jersey Black Issues Convention
New Jersey Chapters of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Incorporated
New Jersey Conference Women’s Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church
New Jersey Institute for Social Justice
New Jersey Multi-Faith Alliance
New Jersey Policy Perspective
New Jersey Student Power Network
New Jersey Tenants Organization
New Jersey Working Families Alliance
Newark Anti-Violence Coalition
NJ State Industrial Union Council
NJ-08 for Progress
Occupy Bergen County
Our Revolution-Essex County
People Power-Hudson County
Princeton SPEAR (Students for Prison Education and Reform)
Prison Policy Initiative
Public Citizen
Recovery Advisory Group
Re-Entry Coalition of New Jersey
Reform Jewish Voice
Reformed Church of Highland Park
Rutgers Law School International Human Rights Clinic
St. Matthew AME Church
Salvation and Social Justice
Shareef Professional Services, LLC
Sisters United Enterprise
South Jersey Women for Progressive Change
STAND Central New Jersey
Teach for America, NJ Region
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
The Meta Theatre Company
The Sentencing Project
Trenton Branch NAACP
Union Baptist Church
Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Montclair
Unitarian Universalist Faith Action NJ
Urban Mental Health Alliance
Voice of the Experienced (VOTE)
Volunteers of America Delaware Valley
YAP (national)
Who Is My Neighbor?
Women Who Never Give Up