The Philadelphia Inquirer’s Jonathan Lai Reports
It was Election Day last year. The big midterm elections.
A group of kids, dressed in yellow, stood outside the campus library and asked everyone walking by: Did you vote? Don’t forget!
Antonne Henshaw didn’t know what to say. Nor did the friend walking with him. So they lied.
“I remember feeling such shame that we had to lie to them,” he said. “We were like, ‘Yeah, we voted,’ but we knew we could never vote.”
Even though Henshaw is a graduate student at Rutgers-Camden, and even though he is not considered a public safety threat, he will be on parole for life after spending 30 years behind bars for fatally shooting a man during a dispute.
New Jersey does not allow the more than 80,000 people on probation or parole for felonies — people who are not incarcerated — to vote.