The Star Ledger Editorial Board writes:

Today, in a country with allegedly the finest justice system ever created by man, we choose to relegate 6.1 million Americans to second-class citizenship.

We silence them, we revoke a fundamental birthright, and we deprive them of dignity. And we do it because of a cockeyed notion that a central tenet of democracy – that government rules with the consent of the governed – should not apply to people with a criminal record.