Here is a grim New Jersey fact that makes you question how much we’ve evolved since Hackensack was a prairie: Since 1844, state law has deprived a sizable part of our citizenry the right to vote.

Today, there are 73,000 New Jerseyans who are denied that fundamental civil right because they are on parole, or on probation — all because lawmakers from an era dominated by the Whig Party decided that losing one’s freedom was not a sufficient punishment.

Felons, they figured, should also be excluded from the democratic process as long as they are serving a sentence. And today, you may be one of the 15,000 parolees who has already served time in prison. Or you may be one of the 58,000 New Jerseyans on probation, who has never even seen the inside of a jail. Under the law, that doesn’t matter: Your voice does not count. You are still relegated to second-class citizenship.

Yes, even here, in the state that initially refused to ratify the 15th Amendment, which gave black men the right to vote.

Thankfully, there is political momentum to update our democracy by a century or two, and at least catch up to such citadels of progressivism as Utah and Montana, just two of the 14 states that restore voting rights for those on parole and probation.

The Senate State Government Committee will conduct hearings Thursday morning and debate the bill. That’s the good news.

The Assembly, however, isn’t so eager: A spokeswoman for Speaker Craig Coughlin said leadership is still reviewing the bills and has no plan to post it anytime soon, which is code for “We’ll look at this after Election Day.”

That’s a ludicrous dodge. If political capital cannot be spent on something as essential as the right to vote, there is no sense in having it.

We have now spent 175 years trying to erase this “moral stain on our democracy,” as Ryan Haygood, president of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, calls it.

The felon disenfranchisement laws have Jim Crow origins. After the Civil War, Southern States employed the Black Codes, which deprived former slaves from voting, so “crimes” such as moral turpitude or loitering were routinely enforced, all with the purpose of subjugating men of color. Behold, the Old South was avenged.

But then it spread throughout the land, as many states used drug laws to banish millions of men of color from the mainstream.

In New Jersey, blacks make up 15 percent of our population, yet they represent half of those who have lost their voting rights because of a criminal conviction. Only legislative cowardice could keep it that way.

Whether those currently incarcerated should have their rights restored is a longer discussion, and a much heavier political lift. Only Vermont and Maine allow that. And it makes practical sense to put off that fight for now, rather than endanger voting rights for the 73,000 on parole and probation.

“There should not be any relationship between voting and the criminal justice system – especially in New Jersey, where we have a 12-to-1 racial disparity in the adult incarceration rate, the largest in the country,” Haygood says. “If you’re serious about criminal justice reform, you must acknowledge that voting facilitates reentry and reduces recidivism.”

Spot-on. When you restore a felon’s right to vote, he is three times less likely to re-offend.

And if reform is truly the aim, recall what Justice William Brennan said of felony disenfranchisement: “The very antithesis of rehabilitation,” the iconic New Jerseyan called it.

Once felons leave prison, we trust them to be productive members of society, pay bills, hold jobs, and to live responsibly. But it is an outrage that one antiquated law deprives them of full citizenship. After 175 years, it’s time that law was changed.