Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

New law automatically restores voting rights for ex-convicts

Bill Restores Voting Right to Former Inmates

Wade Vandervort

Former inmate Jovan Jackson registers to vote on the effective date of Assembly Bill 431 at the First AME Church Monday, July 1, 2019. The bill restores voting rights to formerly incarcerated individuals automatically once they are released from prison.

Bill Restores Voting Right to Former Inmates

Former inmate Ora Watkins registers to vote on the effective date of Assembly Bill 431 at the First AME Church Monday, July 1, 2019. The bill restores voting rights to formerly incarcerated individuals automatically once they are released from prison. Launch slideshow »

In an out of jail, Ora Watkins said she hasn’t voted in more than a decade because of how difficult it was for felons in Nevada to regain their voting rights.

The state Legislature changed that this year, passing a law that automatically gives felons the right to vote after their release from prison. “I’m almost 60, but I feel like the doors have been opened for me,” Watkins said today, moments after registering to vote.

Watkins registered at an event in North Las Vegas marking the new law that went into effect today. State officials including Attorney General Aaron Ford and Assembly members Dina Neal, D-North Las Vegas, Steve Yeager, D-Las Vegas, and William McCurdy, D-Las Vegas, attended the event.

Assembly Speaker Jason Frierson, D-Las Vegas and the sponsor of the bill, was not there but spoke via a prerecorded video.

Passage of the bill sends a message “that we don’t believe in giving up on people; we don’t believe in throwaway citizens,” he said. “We believe in second chances.”

The new law puts Nevada in the company of 15 states and Washington, D.C., that immediately restore voting rights to felons after their release, while two states — Vermont and Maine — never take away a prisoner’s right to vote.

The Nevada Attorney General’s Office, which recently launched a public information campaign about the new law, said up to 77,000 Nevadans could regain the right to vote under the law.

Former inmate Jovan Jackson said the loss of voting rights and things like having to disclose criminal records on certain college and job applications make it more difficult for former prisoners to reintegrate into society.

“How do we expect people to make things better for themselves when we make things harder for them?,” Jackson said.

Before the new law was passed, nonviolent felons in Nevada regained voting rights either upon release from prison or after completing probation or parole. Felons convicted of a violent crime or repeat offenders had to appeal through the courts to have their voting rights restored.

With passage of the new law, “we’ve put aside partisan politics, and we’ve made sure that we’re looking at human beings,” said Chris Giunchigliani, a former Clark County Commissioner and state assemblywoman who advocated for automatic restoration of voter rights.