How Tennessee Keeps Nearly Half a Million People From Voting | NYT Opinion

The Opinion video above takes viewers to Tennessee, the Volunteer State, the capital of country music and the birthplace of Davy Crockett and the MoonPie — and a national leader in voter disenfranchisement.

The state has come about that last claim to fame through its handling of voting access for people convicted of felonies.

While nearly all states suspend or withdraw people’s right to vote when they are convicted of felonies, most allow restoring that right after they have served their sentences.

Many states have made that process easier in recent years — one of them being New York, to the advantage of felon-of-the-moment Donald Trump, who retains his right to vote as long as he’s not incarcerated.

But Tennessee has moved in the opposite direction, making the process significantly more difficult. (Think: bureaucratic maze from hell.)

About 9 percent of the state’s voting-age population is prohibited from voting because of felony convictions. And the effects are particularly acute among the Black population, with an astonishing 21 percent of Black adults barred from voting — the highest rate in the country.

Among them is Sarah Bynum, a community advocate convicted of a felony 30 years ago who has struggled to restore her voting rights and is featured in the video above. “Makes me feel like I’m a foreigner in my own country,” she laments.

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