Take Two translates the day’s headlines for Southern California, making sense of the news and cultural events that affect our lives. Produced by Southern California Public Radio and broadcast from October 2012 – June 2021. Hosted by A Martinez.
A federal ban currently blocks 5.8 million felons from voting, but Attorney General Eric Holder is urging states to change that.
He's calling on them to lift state laws that ban voting by people who have committed felonies, as long as they've done their time and paid all fines associated with the arrest. The move is mostly symbolic, as Holder has no authority to change voting rights, which vary state-by-state.
He says the post-Reconstruction ban still disproportionately affects people of color. In fact. nearly a third of voters currently banned from voting being African American.
Jotaka Eaddy, Senior Director for Voting Rights at the NAACP joins Take Two to talk about the current state of voting laws and what impact restoring the right to vote for millions would have on the country, and the political parties.