MIM Notes 223   December 1, 2000

Massachusetts bans prisoners from voting

[In <a href="http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/mn224.txt">MIM Notes 224</a>, December 15, 2000, we ran a minor correction 
for this story. Utah banned prisoners from voting in 1998. 
See <a href="http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/mn/mn224/masscorr.txt">"Prisoner 'disenfranchisement:' Even worse than we thought"</a>]

On November 7, by a 2-to-1 margin, Massachusetts voters stripped 
prisoners of the right to vote with a constitutional amendment.(1) 
In Amerika, only Maine, Vermont and Utah now allow prisoners to 
vote. This country that leads the "free world," standing as a 
pillar of democracy for all others to emulate is made up of 47 
states that prohibit prisoners from voting, 29 states that also 
disenfranchise people on probation, and 32 states that strip those 
on parole of this right. Fourteen states prohibit those with 
felony convictions from voting for life.

MIM has nothing against the principle of disenfranchisement to 
steer societal development. We wrote in MIM Notes 126 that 
communists have always known "while there are violent 
contradictions in society, there must be dictatorship. ... [T]hose 
who organize to kill others through starvation, war, toxic 
pollution, withholding medicine, clothes or shelter must be put 
down by force, including the use of prison .... When we get to 
that day when the profit system and its kin are as nearly 
universally loathed as the slave system is today, then we can all 
live without dictatorship.

"We at MIM point with pride to the months and years after the U.S. 
Civil War when some Southern slaveowners lost their rights to vote 
and run for office. Republicans at the time understood that the 
slaveowners would come back to power if they were left to organize 
for what they wanted. Today, we benefit from that act of organized 
force against slaveowners and only a small portion of the world 
would think of supporting slavery. That is progress. The next step 
will be to do the same thing for those who profit from murder."(6)

Prisons are a form of organized violence, a form of dictatorship, 
used by one class to suppress another. Where MIM would like to use 
prisons as part of the dictatorship of the international 
proletariat, the Amerikan prison system is part of the 
dictatorship of the imperialist bourgeoisie. In particular, 
Amerikan prisons are a tool of national oppression. 

Voting restrictions further stigmatize and exclude prisoners and 
ex-prisoners from participation in social life. Amerika's criminal 
injustice system has grown exponentially in response to and 
prevention of national liberation movements of the internal semi-
colonies. Whites are still the substantial majority of u.$. 
citizens. But they are less than half this country's prisoner 
population as the lockdown takes large numbers oppressed nation 
men off of the streets.

For the Black nation, the bourgeois disenfranchisement laws mean 
that while 2% of all u.$. adult residents are banned by a felony 
conviction from voting, 13.1% of Black men are so disenfranchised. 
In Alabama and Florida the rate is even higher, over 31% of Black 
adult men can not vote.(2) MIM was not able to find numbers for 
the Latino or First Nations.

The Massachusetts constitutional amendment concludes a three-year 
effort by Governor Cellucci to retaliate against prisoners who 
formed a Political Action Committee. In July 1998, the 
Massachusetts government discovered that Norfolk County prisoners 
had formed a political action committee (PAC) to organize 
prisoners to vote and to lobby against the transfer of prisoners 
from Massachusetts to Texas and for other reforms in the prison 
system.(5) Governor responded with Executive Order 399, 
prohibiting formation of the PAC and making possession of PAC 
materials punishable. Guards tossed organizers' cells for PAC 
materials.(5) The ban passed the state legislature twice with high 
margins and then was sent to the voters.

Cellucci cannot have been worried about the prisoner PAC's level 
of direct influence. In 1999, the AFSCME union spent $2.8 million 
in "soft money" on Democrats and Philip Morris gave $2.9 million 
to Republicans.(3) The total raised by the Massachusetts prisoner 
PAC? $243.(4) The problem for Cellucci was the dangerous example 
of prisoners organizing to fight for their interests. As MIM Notes 
readers know from reading Under Lock & Key and MIM coverage, 
prisons in Amerika operate in frequent violation of their own 
rules and with regular disregard for their supposed mission of 
correction or rehabilitation. So any activism for their own rights 
that attracts the attention from the outside world is a threat to 
the state's authority within the prisons.

MIM agrees with the PAC founder that prisoners should be as 
integrated with the outside as possible. Prisoners in Maoist China 
were encouraged first to study and understand how their crimes had 
affected the people. On successful study they were given 
productive work both to occupy their time and to develop an 
understanding that they could contribute to building socialism in 
a positive way. Ultimately reforming their thinking included tours 
around factories and communes to understand how a socialist 
economy relies principally on the energetic contributions of its 
people. Such interaction prepared prisoners to participate in 
society when their sentences had been completed. MIM supports use 
of such a prison system under the dictatorship of the proletariat 
as a means of uniting even former militarists and bankers in the 
work of developing a society that recognizes all people's right to 
live.

But Governor Cellucci and his prison system have no interest in 
helping prisoners return to society, or in building a society that 
treats all people equally within the law. So while we agree with 
the PAC founders on the importance of involving prisoners in 
politics, we lead prisoners in revolutionary politics, and away 
from the politics of the bourgeoisie. The armed might of Amerikan 
imperialism supports the theft of superprofits from the Third 
World and locks u.$. borders tightly to secure that booty. This is 
a systemic problem, not something we're going to be changing at 
the Amerikan ballot box.

Notes:

1. The Boston Globe 11/9/2000, p. B2. 

2. Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws 
in the United States. Report by The Sentencing Project and Human 
Rights Watch. October 1998, http://www.hrw.org/reports98/vote/ 
November 9, 2000. 

3. Common Cause, SoftTrack: The Soft Money Database, 
http://www.commoncause.org/laundromat/topdonors99_new.htm November 
9, 2000 Most PACs give money to both parties, so these numbers in 
terms of influence purchased are misleadingly low. 

4. Prison Legal News October 2000, p. 4. 

5. Mass RAIL No 14. February 99. 
http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/rail/mr14.txt 9 November, 2000. 

6. MN126 15 November, 1996.