EDITORIAL: Keep your eyes on what’s important

As a journalist, the best kinds of stories are the ones where you learn something yourself. A recent SunLight Project on the restoration of voting rights did that for The Observer staff. We had all thought felons permanently lost their right to vote upon conviction, but in fact they don’t: They can’t vote while serving their sentence, including probation, and they can’t vote until they’ve paid all their fines and fees.

Once they’ve paid their debt to society, they are free to register and to vote, just like anyone else. After learning this, we find it to be a fair approach to one of Americans’ most important rights.

A poll on The Moultrie Observer’s website found many who agreed with us, but almost as many wanted the more permanent approach.

The poll, posted Oct. 15 after the SunLight Project story ran Oct. 13, received 91 responses as of Thursday morning. Two of the five options received large, roughly equal responses, while the other three were much smaller:

• 35: Felons should finish all parts of their sentence before they can vote.

• 29: A felon should lose the right to vote permanently.

• 11: A felony should not prevent a person from voting, even if he’s in prison.

• 9: Fines and fees shouldn’t prevent someone from voting.

• 7: Probation is to bring a felon back into society, so a probationer should be able to vote.

Interestingly, the least popular option is the one that’s being considered by lawmakers, according to the SunLight Project reporting.

We think the current rule is good, but we’re not opposed to the proposed change. We just don’t think it’s the most important part of the question.

First, it is far more important that the court’s judgment is accurate to begin with. Every few months we hear stories about a convicted felon freed after years in prison because new evidence proves he didn’t commit the crime he was convicted of. That wrongly convicted person lost the right to vote along with a lot of other things, whether due to misconduct, honest errors, lack of training or any other factor. These judgments will never be perfect, but we must constantly seek better ways to correctly determine guilt or innocence.

Second, the corrections system must become much, much better at rehabilitation. As described in the SunLight reporting Oct. 13, probation is intended to re-introduce the felon into society. Another phrase for probation is “supervised release,” but probation officers are limited by their caseload as to how effectively they can supervise the probationers. And there’s a notable scarcity of groups trying to help former inmates get jobs, stay off drugs, get an education and do the other things they must do to stay on the right track.

How many felons serve their prison sentences then go on to lead productive, beneficial lives? We’ve never seen any numbers, but we’ve heard lots of stories about the challenges they face in doing that. What can society do to improve their success rate? That’s far more important than whether we restore their right to vote — or not — based on whether they’ve paid the last dollar of their fines. If they can’t get a job because they are a felon, paying thousands of dollars in fines is simply impossible.

Third, how do we get more of the people who are eligible to vote to actually do so? About half of Colquitt County’s population is registered to vote — some are ineligible because they’re too young or because of a felony conviction — but we’ve covered elections where only 13 percent of registered voters bothered to cast ballots. To paraphrase a Mark Twain quote: People who don’t vote have no great advantage over people who can’t.

If the legislature allowed felony probationers to vote, how many of them actually would? We figure the number is so small as to be irrelevant — especially in light of the more important challenges we face in building a fair and successful society.