By Caleb Bedillion,
The Marshall Project,
John Cook moved back to Mississippi in 2022 after about 15 years of living in the Atlanta area, where he ran his own telecom business maintaining fiber optic lines.
Hurricane Katrina had driven Cook from his home on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 2005, but now, his business sold, Cook was glad to return to the Magnolia State. He bought a large farm-style house on land in the state’s Pine Belt region. But in one important respect to Cook, he soon found the state didn’t fully welcome him.
Cook, now 66, learned from local voting officials that he was barred from casting a ballot because he had several 40-year-old felony convictions, including grand larceny. Yet he had legally voted in Georgia for years.
“I can’t come back to my home state and vote?” Cook said. “It’s a life sentence. I’m being deprived even though I’ve served my time.”
In most U.S. states, Cook would have been able to vote as he did in Georgia, despite his prior conviction. Mississippi is among 11 states that ban at least some people with felony convictions from voting for life, according to the Sentencing Project.
Critics deem Mississippi’s law especially confusing. The state imposes a lifetime voting ban on people convicted for a range of violent and nonviolent crimes, but allows people convicted of many other crimes to retain their voting rights, even while still in prison.
A voting reform bill this year in the Mississippi Legislature would have benefited Cook and thousands of other disenfranchised voters convicted of nonviolent offenses – such as writing a bad check – but it died in the state Senate. The bill would have automatically restored their right to vote starting with the November election.
Legislative inaction early this year was followed in July by a decision from the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled against a claim that Mississippi’s law violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. This means that even as people across the country prepare to cast their presidential ballots, Cook and tens of thousands of other Mississippians remain locked out of the electoral process.
No state agency comprehensively tracks the total number of people who have lost their voting rights in Mississippi. But court records reviewed by The Marshall Project – Jackson show that at least 55,000 people have lost their voting rights in the state since 1994.
The actual number of disenfranchised people is almost certainly higher, because records reviewed by the news organization don’t include people like Cook, whose convictions came before 1994. The court records since 1994 are also likely incomplete.
Three judges on the Fifth Circuit dissented from the court’s July opinion and pointed to the example of people like Cook and thousands of others like him who have long served their sentence. Dissenters wrote that “Denying released offenders the right to vote takes away their full dignity as citizens” and “separates them from the rest of their community.”
The majority of the Fifth Circuit judges, on the other hand, suggested opponents of the law should seek change through the Legislature rather than the courts.
Despite the Legislature’s failure to approve such change, vocal defenders of the current system are few, even in the state Senate where reform legislation died this year. State Sen. Angela Hill, a Republican from the Gulf Coast area, was a key figure blocking the House bill but said in a radio interview this year the list of disenfranchising crimes should perhaps be narrower, without offering specifics.
State Rep. Kabir Karriem, a Democrat from the northeast Mississippi city of Columbus, has long been an emphatic supporter of reforming the state’s felony disenfranchisement laws.
He authored the bipartisan bill that passed the House this year and said he intends to keep pushing to overhaul the state’s felony disenfranchisement laws so that no one feels unwelcome in their home state.
“Democracy,” said Karriem, “is built on everyone having the right to elect their representative.”
In his late teens and early 20s in the 1970s, Cook began using drugs and committed a string of drug and property crimes. At the time, voting was not on his mind.
“I didn’t vote,” Cook said. “I just didn’t care.”
Cook served several years in state prison and was released in 1982. He still wasn’t thinking about his right to vote. Instead, he began rebuilding his life.
From a job marking underground phone lines with a can of paint, Cook eventually rose to own several telecommunications service businesses, based first on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast, and then in the Atlanta area. It was in Georgia that Cook registered to vote in his late 40s and cast a ballot for the first time in his life.
“I hold the vote precious,” Cook said. “That’s my voice.”
Cook’s convictions show the complexity that people with felony convictions must navigate to answer a simple question – can I vote? His convictions for drug possession and even burglary did not impact his right to vote in Mississippi. People with these convictions can cast a ballot even from prison. However, because Cook also has a conviction for grand larceny, he can no longer vote in the state.
At least 35,000 people could be eligible for restoration of their voting rights if the now-defeated House bill had become law, according to a review of court records by The Marshall Project – Jackson. That includes Cook, with his grand larceny conviction.
At least 16,500 people were convicted of grand larceny from 1994 through 2023, making them the single largest group of disenfranchised voters in the state, according to a review of court records.
A resident can regain their voting rights in Mississippi, but it’s not an easy or accessible process. Either the governor or the Legislature can restore a person’s voting rights, but that doesn’t happen often. In this year’s legislative session, lawmakers restored voting rights to 16 people, out of 49 restoration bills that were introduced.
Cook didn’t even know restoration was possible.
This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system.
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