SEATTLE (AP) — A federal appeals court has upheld Washington state’s ban on voting by prison inmates.
The ruling came Thursday in a case that challenged the ban under the Voting Rights Act, claiming that it disproportionately disenfranchised minority voters.
In January, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals caused a stir by ruling that Washington’s inmates should have the right to vote. But an 11-judge panel reconsidered the case at a hearing in San Francisco last month and came to a different conclusion.
The judges said that to challenge a ban on felons voting, inmates would have to demonstrate intentional discrimination in the criminal justice system — not just a disparity in the racial make-up of the prison population.
