Panel: Voting rights must be expanded

by Kate Folk  Washington Square News  05 October 2004
Contributing Writer

Americans must fight particularly hard this year to make sure more citizens can vote - and that their votes count, voting rights experts said last night at a panel discussion at the Kimmel Center.

The discussion was the first in a series sponsored by NYU's branches of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

One panelist, Diana Salas, who represents the New York Coalition to Expand Voting Rights, made an impassioned plea for immigrant voting rights.

Immigrants who have lived in this country for years, who make up a quarter of the population in some communities and who otherwise act as citizens, should have the same - or almost the same - voting rights as full citizens, Salas said.

"Voting has never been about citizenship," Salas said. "Voting has always been about power and who is willing to share it. We're saying that anyone who is a resident of the city of New York should be able to vote for their representatives, at least at the local level."

If New York City eased voting restrictions on immigrants, Salas said, other cities across the country would follow suit.

"New York City would put [this issue] on the map," Salas said.

Joseph "Jazz" Hayden from the "Unlock the Block" campaign said all felons, most of whom are now disenfranchised, should have the right to vote. In the United States, every state except Maine and Vermont denies most felons the vote.

Two-thirds of the 4.65 million disenfranchised felons in this country are out of prison and are expected to behave in all other ways as regular citizens, Hayden said.

"This is the civil rights issue of the 21st century," Hayden said. "When you go to prison, you don't lose your citizenship - you lose your liberty. America is not the norm. [America] disenfranchises their citizens at a rate higher than any other first-world country."

Bo Lipari, a software engineer, said votes could be miscounted by the new electronic voting machines, which are contracted by private vendors. Without a thorough paper trail of the votes, the public has no guarantee of their validity, he said.

Arthur Eisenberg of the New York Civil Liberties Union related the history of students' voting rights, and Douglas Kellner, a member of the New York City Board of Elections, emphasized a history of exclusion in U.S. voting policies.

About 30 people attended last night's event. Additional panel discussions on social justice and civil liberties will be held every Monday through October.

"We're hoping people come to get more information," said Judith Le, a CAS junior who helped organize the series. "There has been a lot of attention on the candidates, and we're hoping to get the focus back on the issues."

Next Monday's panel discussion will focus on reproductive rights. •