The Kentucky Republican is also pursuing drug sentencing reform in the Senate. Paul aims for minority voters

Rand Paul is opening a new frontier for Republicans: Voting rights.

The Kentucky senator is introducing this week a bill that restores voting rights to nonviolent felons in federal elections.


Paul is also pursuing drug sentencing reform in the Senate and is mulling efforts aimed at easing nonviolent criminals back into the job market. He even wants to redefine some drug offenses currently classified as felonies to misdemeanors.

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Together, the moves add up to a concerted effort to get minorities, young people and civil libertarians excited about Republicans — groups that much of the party admits it needs.

Paul argues he’s inspired by a sense of justice, but the expected 2016 contender won’t deny that his criminal justice portfolio is also motivated by politics.

“I believe in these issues. But I’m a politician, and we want more votes,” he conceded in an interview. “Even if Republicans don’t get more votes, we feel like we’ve done the right thing.”

Nearly 8 percent of the black population currently cannot vote, compared with 1.8 percent of the nonblack population, according to The Sentencing Project. And incarcerations for nonviolent offenses that lead to a loss of voting rights fall more heavily on African-Americans and Latinos than whites, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.

As of 2011, more than a third of the 637,000 nonviolent prisoners in state or federal prisons were serving time for drug offenses. And although that year African-Americans made up about 13 percent of the population and Latinos about 16 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, BJS reported that 44 percent of those imprisoned for drugs were black and 20 percent were Latino.

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Paul says the end result is a criminal justice system that disproportionately punishes minorities, making it harder to vote and gain employment — key to reintegrating felons into their communities.

“There’s a racial outcome to the war on drugs. Three out of four people in prison for nonviolent drug offenses are black and brown,” Paul said. “White kids are using drugs at the same rate black kids are.”

The re-enfranchisement of convicted felons has long been a cause of liberals like Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.), whose own bill would deliver voting rights to ex-cons regardless of the crimes they’ve committed.

Republicans have been absent from that effort, so Paul’s embrace of voting rights legislation has excited civil rights groups, even though a bipartisan deal on voting rights is likely years away.

“Having both a Republican voice and a Democratic voice on this issue is a huge step forward,” said Nicole Austin-Hillery, who runs the Brennan Center for Justice’s Washington office. “That is going to help change the national conversation.”

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While Paul enters the week as the sole sponsor of his legislation, on Monday he’ll send out a “Dear Colleague” letter targeting the 75 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of Republicans he estimates can support his bill. Those Republicans would most likely come from the wing of his party that is embracing drug sentencing reform, like Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas.

The fight for re-enfranchisement of felons is animated by stories Paul has heard in places where the GOP has been scarce for decades, like Detroit, Howard University and black communities in Louisville.

“One friend of mine, whose brother grew marijuana plants 20 years ago, still can’t vote,” Paul said. “Some of the leaders in the African-American community … can’t vote. It is something that is consistent with my religious beliefs as well as my lawmaking that you should get a second chance.”

In February, Paul testified in front of a Kentucky state Senate committee in favor of restoring voting rights for nonviolent felons, but that legislation became tangled up with differences between the state Legislature’s two chambers. Now he’s taking his case to the federal level — banking that it won’t hurt a run for president, either. A recent poll in Kentucky showed Paul garnering 29 percent of the African-American vote — a huge bump from the 13 percent he received during his 2010 Senate campaign.

“That would be a huge increase. Not just for me, but for all Republicans,” Paul said.

Paul’s proposal would restore voting rights in federal elections to nonviolent felons — which could create a complicated situation in states like Kentucky, with some voters barred from voting for governor but able to vote for president. The attorney general would certify which crimes are designated as nonviolent.

The legislation would restore the right to vote provided felons are not in prison or have been on probation for at least a year. State and federal governments would be required to notify individuals of their voting right restoration, and incarcerated prisoners currently allowed to vote in states like Vermont and Maine would not lose that right.

Voting rights activists prefer Cardin’s legislation to more broadly restore voting rights, avoiding carve-outs for violent felons and those on probation, which Paul favors. But those same activists — and Cardin — praise Paul for a willingness to take up the GOP torch on the issue.

Cardin has spoken one on one with Paul on the issue and said his stewardship of the effort is a “breakthrough” toward a compromise, even with sticking points.

“I’m very excited he has seen the need to change our laws to restore voting rights,” Cardin said in an interview, though the Marylander believes “the right policy is that everybody should get their voting rights restored.”

Delegating which crimes are defined as violent to the attorney general’s office is also a concern, and the American Civil Liberties Union wants to avoid making voting laws more complicated. The ACLU believes Cardin’s bill works because it is simple.

“There’s a reason why we can’t adopt these sort of carve-outs at this time. There’s so much confusion,” said Deborah Vagins, a legislative counsel with the ACLU. “We just fundamentally believe there needs to be a bright line test.”

Though many assume Democrats would inordinately benefit from the re-enfranchisement of millions of convicted criminals, it may not be so clear-cut, said Jotaka Eaddy, the senior director of voting rights at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

“This is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue,” Eaddy said. “I’m almost certain there are people that would vote Republican that are disenfranchised.”

Voting rights is but one plank in Paul’s emerging criminal justice reform package. He has already introduced legislation aimed at scaling back mandatory minimum sentencing for drug offenders, which has sparked chatter among both liberal Democrats and Republican leaders about solutions to crowded prisons.

“There’s a thawing in society,” Paul said. “Maybe we’ve gone too far on the punishing angle. There’s sort of a movement afoot.”

Paul is now considering additional rebuttals to the drug war: Aiding job-seekers with misdemeanor blemishes on their records, reclassifying some drug crimes from felonies to misdemeanors and giving people tools to fight asset seizures by law enforcement in drug cases.

“We’re going to keep working on it; this is a big issue for us. Not only the voter restoration aspect of this but also the employment aspect of this,” Paul said. “We’re in favor for reform of civil forfeiture laws … they take your bank account and your truck, then you have to sue the government to get your truck even if you’re innocent.”

One thing left off Paul’s punch list of proposals is responding to new voter ID laws sweeping across conservative states. He is trying to make voting rights as “expansive as possible,” but pushback against voter ID laws isn’t in the mix.

“It’s a much bigger problem losing your right completely than it is showing your identification,” Paul said. “I’ve had to show my ID when I go see Eric Holder. … I don’t think there’s anything inherently racist about [ID laws]. But I don’t think we want to make the vote more restrictive.”