Undaunted by the heat, ex-felon Curtis Griffin spends his late summer afternoons walking Rialto and Fontana's bleakest neighborhoods on the hunt for ex-cons - each a potential voter who might cast the decisive ballot in the historic November 4 national election.
Finding them isn't the hard part, explains Griffin, it's getting them to admit that a past mistake has kept them from the ballot box.
At voter registration events like this, activists and election officials are spreading the word: ‘For the record, felons can vote’
"Most ex-felons out here are under the false assumption they can't vote. In California you can vote! There's a lot of misinformation and confusion out there."
That's an understatement. Consider this: a 2001 U.S. Civil Rights Commission report concluded that the disenfranchisement of ex-convicts is "the biggest hindrance to Black voting since the poll tax."
The racial impact of racial disenfranchisement laws is particularly egregious. Thirteen percent of all Black men - 1.4 million cannot vote due to a patchwork of voting restrictions and the paralyzing grip of post Civil War Jim Crow laws. That represents just over one-third (36 percent) of the total disenfranchised population blocked from the vote even after they have completed their sentence and paid their debt to society: a rate seven times that of any other group in America.
The effects of voter disenfranchisement are universal except for Maine and Vermont, all states deprive individuals with felony convictions of the right to vote for varying periods of time.
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