Loss of Voting Rights Bill Should Fail

“Paul Quinn’s private Bill which proposes that all prisoners should lose their voting rights should fail – but I’m not holding my breath”, says Kim Workman, Director of Rethinking Crime and Punishment

In 1992, the then Solicitor General advised government that removing voting rights from all prisoners was a breach of the Bill of Rights, and that imposing a limitation on those rights could not be justified.

He did however, suggest that the right to vote meant the right to exercise an informed electoral choice reached through “ freedom of belief, conscience, opinion, expression, association and assembly.” That meant a complete freedom of access to the process of “discussion and interplay of ideas, by which public opinion is formed.” He went on to make the point that prisoners serving more than three years, (the electoral term) did not have the opportunity to full and informative discussion and that a limit could be justified. This was the earlier recommendation of the Royal Commission on Electoral Law, and was agreed to.

Prisoners serving sentence less that three years do have the opportunity to discussion and the exchange of ideas – the removal of their rights to vote is clearly a breach of the Human Rights Act.

Paul Quinn’s Bill will affect the 85% -90% of all prisoners who will be out of prison within two years. Forty percent will be out in less than 6 months. While it may be a matter of
Indifference to many prisoners, the Bill not only disenfranchises them, it disenfranchises their communities. Because a disproportionate number of prisoners live in communities such as Otara, Flaxmere, Cannons Creek and so on, those communities lose a significant number of voters. I am sure that Paul Quinn didn’t intend it, but the Opposition will be quick to note that a huge proportion of the 8,500 prisoner votes lost as a result of this Bill, will be in Labour and Maori Party strongholds.

In contrast, the United States Court of Appeal ruled last month that the removal of prisoners rights to vote is a breach of the Voting Rights Act, because it discriminates disproportionately against those ethnic minorities who are overrepresented in the prison population. in New Zealand, Maori comprise 15% of the general population and 51% of the prison population. The proposed Bill would seem therefore to contravene the Bill of Rights in two respects – Section 12 (the right to vote), and Section 19 (freedom from discrimination).

ENDS

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