prisoner image

An Alabama Department of Corrections inmate. (AP Photo)

When Kenneth Glasgow got his voting rights restored after 14 years of incarceration, he tied a string to his voter registration card and wore it around his neck for months.

"Everybody said, 'Why do you have yourself tagged like that? You're not a prisoner anymore,'" he recalled. "I said, ' No, I'm not a prisoner no more. This proves I'm a citizen.'"

That notion of equating voting rights to citizenship came to him through prayer and study, he said, while he was still in prison.

"Once a person gets a felony conviction, they can't get a job. They can't get housing, they can't get education, they can't get their lives back together. But if you give a person their voting right, then they are declared and decreed a citizen of the United States," Glasgow said. "It'll start making them act like a citizen, start making them want to be a better citizen, and start making them become productive as a citizen."

When he was released in 2001, Glasgow almost immediately started visiting inmates to talk to them about becoming civically engaged once they re-enter society.

By 2003, his ministry shifted from talking with this group -- who have nearly every aspect of their lives decided upon by a government official -- to helping them actually cast votes from prison.

He started with city and county jails. The inmates there were either serving time for misdemeanors or were awaiting trial and hadn't been convicted of anything, so they were still eligible to vote.

"At that particular time, I didn't know (some felons) could vote out of prisons," he said.

That all changed in 2007, when he said former Attorney General Troy King used the phrase "moral turpitude" during an exchange between the two.

Any person who has been convicted of a felony that does not involve moral turpitude never lost their right to vote, Glasgow learned.

In 1984, the Alabama Supreme Court defined moral turpitude as "an act of baseness, vileness or depravity in the private and social duties which a man owes to his fellowmen or to society in general."

This meant the inmates serving time for felony convictions such as drug possession, trespassing, violating liquor laws, driving under the influence or aiding a prisoner escape could cast absentee votes from state prisons.

Once he realized this, Glasgow took his work to state penitentiaries where he began applicable inmates register to vote, despite their felony convictions.

The Associated Press published a story during the 2008 election season detailing Glasgow's efforts in the prisons.

On the same day the AP story ran, Mike Hubbard, who at the time was serving as Chairman of the Alabama Republican Party, wrote a letter to then-Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner Richard Allen about Glasgow's work.

"The Alabama Republican Party is in full support of increasing the amount of registered voters in the state, and has many programs designed to facilitate this. However, we do not support the registering of individuals who have committed crimes and are currently incarcerated in the penal system," the letter reads.

Allen responded the next day, stating he had "directed correctional employees to no longer facilitate any voter registration drives on correctional property."

The exchange set in motion federal court litigation initiated by Glasgow against Allen, ultimately resulting in a settlement agreement.

Hubbard has since been convicted of 12 felony ethics charges and sentenced to four years in prison.

In part, the settlement says jails and prisons must post flyers about inmates' voting rights, allow Glasgow in to help register inmates, and provide him a quarterly roster of released inmates convicted of drug possession offenses.

But since the 2008 settlement, Glasgow says he has consistently encountered hurdles with getting inmates registered to vote.

In 2012, his legal counsel sent a letter to ADOC, stating that he hadn't been allowed access to inmates or provided a roster of inmates convicted of drug possession offenses. It also said ADOC had failed to post fliers about their voting rights.

"This lack of access runs afoul of the ADOC's obligation . pursuant to the agreement," the letter reads.

On Oct. 20, his attorneys again sent a letter to ADOC, alleging the same complaints they set out in 2012.

While Secretary of State John Merrill sent a letter to all Alabama sheriffs on Sept. 30 informing them about the law and how it relates to inmate voting, many inmates are still unaware of their voting rights, Glasgow said.

Without that knowledge, Glasgow believes inmates are hindered from beginning their journey toward civic engagement.

"We (ex-felons) were known as and labeled as non-productive citizens, degenerates of society, menaces of society," he said "The way to curtail that was for us to become productive members of society."

KELSEY DAVIS, Montgomery Advertiser