Iowa Supreme Court upholds lifetime felon voting ban

The Iowa Supreme Court has upheld a ban on felons voting in Iowa. Griffin had been sentenced to probation in 2008 for a felony drug crime and she’d voted after her probation was over. “This is the community standard expressed by our Legislature and is consistent with the basic standard we have used over the years. In addition, unlike some past cases when we have interpreted provisions of our constitution, the facts and evidence of this case are insufficient to justify judicial recognition of a different meaning”, wrote Chief Justice Martin Cady.

With this decision, Iowa joins Florida and Kentucky in being the only three states with a lifetime voting ban on ex-felons.

“Because many of these disenfranchised felons – like Griffin – were convicted of crimes having no relationship to the integrity of the electoral process or other democratic institutions, I believe a negative societal impact has occurred”, Hecht wrote. Thursday’s ruling was the first time that the court had formally interpreted the term, which had always been assumed to describe a felony under state or federal law. Griffin was quickly acquitted at trial in 2014, though she paid about $10,000 in legal costs.

All felons are disenfranchised by the Iowa Constitution’s bar on voting by those convicted of “infamous crimes”, the court ruled in a 4-3 decision. Secretary of State Paul Pate was named in Griffin’s appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court.

“A new definition will be up to the future evolution of our understanding of voter disqualification as a society, revealed through the voices of our democracy”, the court said.

His opponent argued that it should: Bisignano had pleaded guilty to second-offense OWI, which is an aggravated misdemeanor that carried a penalty of prison time and met the case-law definition of an infamous crime.

But the Supreme Court ruled that any felony does still qualify as an infamous crime, though it left the door open for that to be reconsidered in the future. But he disavowed that ruling in Thursday’s majority opinion, writing that it had been decided hastily before an election.

In 2005, then-Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Democrat, signed an executive order creating an automatic process granting voting rights to felons who had completed their sentences. Pate says he applauds the court for ruling that under the state’s constitution “felons lose their voting privileges.: Pate says the “goes in line with 150 years of precedence and has been reaffirmed by the people of Iowa and their elected representatives on many occasions”. Relief through the exercise of the gubernatorial power is a possibility, but there is no constitutional requirement that the governor establish an administrative process for restoring voting rights.

Only about 20 ex-offenders have been restored annually since Republican Gov.