A right to vote, even in prison
Despite the best efforts of Kate Sheppard and her allies 125 long years ago, we still do not have universal suffrage in New Zealand. Since 2010, none of our approximately 10,000 prisoners have been legally entitled to vote. From 1993 to 2010, that rule applied only to those serving three years or more.
The 2010 law change was the result a member’s bill by otherwise obscure one-term National list MP Paul Quinn. It has been successfully challenged in court but that does not mean it will be reversed any time soon. The attorney-general said ‘‘the blanket disenfranchisement of prisoners appears to be inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act and cannot be justified’’ under the act. Serving prisoners then brought an action in the High Court, which agreed. This month, the Supreme Court upheld that decision.
But still, despite the legal victories, the Government has not been in a hurry to restore prisoners’ voting rights. Justice Minister Andrew Little has said while he personally supports those rights, it is ‘‘not that much of a priority’’.
This will be frustrating both for the prisoners who spent years trying to win back their rights and for justice advocates who recognise the unfairness of the current position.
It has now become a political issue. Justice campaign group JustSpeak and the Green Party are both pushing for the recognition of prisoners’ voting rights. Their cases are persuasive.
They point out there is a clear racial bias. While Ma¯ ori make up 15 per cent of the population, they are over-represented in prison, where 51 per cent are Ma¯ ori. Just Speak has said ‘‘research has repeatedly found this over-representation to be a result of institutionalised racism, which is a pretty significant violation of the social contract that our country is founded on, the Treaty of Waitangi. On a practical level the voting ban disproportionately affects Ma¯ ori participation in elections and further disenfranchises a group that already struggles with voter turnout.’’
Why are prisoners barred from voting? In 2010, before Quinn’s bill became law, academic Andrew Geddis wrote that disenfranchisement usually served three purposes, all of which he found questionable. First, it is a form of punishment. Second, it is a response to a breach of the social contract. Third, there is a belief prisoners are not ‘‘morally worthy’’ to vote.
For Geddis, the third reason harked back to the Victorian 19th century when only male property owners over 21 could vote and others, such as women, the poor and the young, did not deserve to. Most of those disqualifications have been chipped away at, leaving the morally unworthy prisoners without a vote.
There are variations worldwide. A landmark study by Emmett Sanders, titled Full Human Beings, found six European nations at least partially protect incarcerated citizens’ right to vote and 18 grant prisoners the vote regardless of offence. ‘‘In Germany, Norway, and Portugal, only crimes specifically targeting the ‘integrity of the state’ or ‘constitutionally protected democratic order’ result in disenfranchisement,’’ he wrote. Prisoners have full voting rights in both Canada and South Africa.
A former prisoner, Sanders was writing in the US context where prisoner disenfranchisement varies from state to state. But New Zealanders who scoff at the complexities and unusually punitive nature of US justice do not have much to feel superior about when we consider the rights we seem happy to see removed.
‘‘Prisoners have full voting rights in both Canada and South Africa.’’