Slavery... not fully dead yet?

Ballot initiatives point to a scary reality

The success of progressive ballot initiatives was one of the great stories of the 2018 election cycle. Campaigns to restore voting rights, expand Medicaid, and implement fair redistricting won the day in both swing states and very red ones, displaying a hunger for progressive policies and sidestepping the regressive Republican legislatures that were blocking them. (It so pissed off the GOP that they’ve spent all of 2019 trying to undo the initiatives, which has been equal parts fun and infuriating to watch.)

Inspired and empowered by last year’s success, progressive groups are doubling down on the strategy for 2020. This weekend, as I put together an early list of the announced initiatives, I came across a few startling, disturbing facts.

The 13th amendment (and the surrender of the Confederacy) banned the enslavement of free peoples in the United States, but it made a tricky exception: Slavery, the amendment declared, was still a legitimate punishment for convicted criminals. Many state constitutions further enshrined that exemption, leading to a nasty sort of sanctioned human trafficking that began after the Civil War and lasted well into the 20th century.

Here’s part of an op-ed about its use in Nebraska from the Omaha World-Herald, published earlier this year:

But while the Nebraska Constitution of 1875 prohibits slavery, it provides a strange exception, allowing involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. Authorities in Nebraska used that provision for decades to allow convict leasing, in which prisoners were leased out to provide labor for farms, roads and other projects.

Leased convicts helped build Nebraska’s second Capitol building in the 1880s. By 1908, some 82 percent of state prisoners were at work as leased convicts, said State Sen. Justin Wayne of Omaha. The practice continued off and on until 1940. In the South, convict labor gained infamy during the Jim Crow era for allowing terrible abuse of black inmates.

Activists in Nebraska and Utah — not exactly traditional bastions of liberal movement politics — have worked diligently to end the exemption. The legislatures there passed bills this year to revamp that segment of their respective state constitutions, edits that require voters to ratify in ballot questions in 2020. They would be the second and third states to fully eliminate slavery, following a successful 2018 ballot initiative that finally declared complete emancipation in Colorado.

One could chalk this up to strange arcana, simple byproducts of a byzantine lawmaking process in a fractured country of mini-republics. But given the desperate need for criminal justice reform that still plagues much of the nation (and the tremendous pushback that reformers such as Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner have received), they are less relics of old legislatures than symbolic of a very unequal country that is far less advanced and democratic than it would like to believe.

Last year, for example, Floridians voted overwhelmingly to give the right to vote back to ex-criminals who had served their time and returned to society. Republicans running the state, however, are so devoted to disenfranchising black people (who due to other racist practices, make up a disproportionate percentage of ex-felons there) that they instituted a modern-day poll tax to blunt the impact of the ballot initiative. That controversy is still being litigated.

In more uplifting voter rights and ballot initiative news, Arizona is looking at a ballot initiative that would formalize automatic voter registration at the DMV, legalize same-day voter registration, and lower the campaign donation limit.

State law now requires residents to opt in to register to vote while at a Motor Vehicle Division office.

Arizona residents would also be allowed to register to vote and cast a ballot on the same day. 

The initiative eliminates a state law requiring voters to register at least 29 days prior to an election.

And ballots returned by mail would count as long as they’re postmarked by 7 p.m. on Election Day, meaning election officials would have to wait to count those votes for up to 10 days after an election. Edman acknowledged that would delay election results, but said it’s more important that voters be afforded ample time to vote by mail.

Concessions are also made for Native American voters by requiring county election officials to host voting centers on tribal lands.

And out in Oklahoma, activists — undoubtedly inspired by the success of ballot initiatives in Missouri and Utah — have already collected enough signatures to get Medicaid expansion on the ballot in 2020.

Coming up…

Last week, I dove into the many Texas legislature races we’re targeting in 2020, with a flip of the State House very much in play. Now, I’m digging into the Florida State House races with an eye on highlighting a number of those flippable targets in the coming weeks. Here’s a sneak preview:

Starting in early 2020, we’ll be featuring interviews with candidates in Texas, Florida, and a number of other crucial states. Understanding their stories and their districts is critical to helping them defeat Republicans, paint their states blue in November, and pass real progressive legislation going forward.

This has been a free preview of the paid subscriber version of Progressives Everywhere. The main email will remain free, but for news, notes, and previews of upcoming campaigns and plans — as well as the opportunity to weigh in with your opinions in group conversations — consider subscribing to the paid version, at just $5 a month!