LOS ANGELES (AP) — California voters could decide whether to restore voting rights to people in prison for felony convictions under a newly proposed constitutional amendment.
It would be a major expansion of voting rights for incarcerated people if passed. California will join Maine and Vermont, as well as the District of Columbia, as the only states where felons will not lose their right to vote, even in prison, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
The California bill, introduced Friday by Assemblyman Isaac Bryan, proposes an amendment to the state constitution.
“Democracy thrives when everyone has the opportunity to have their voice heard,” Bryan wrote on Twitter.
Two-thirds of each state legislative chamber must vote yes for the bill to appear on the ballot as a proposition. Voters must then approve it by a simple majority in order for it to become a constitutional amendment.
California is now among 21 states where felons only lose their right to vote while incarcerated, the conference said. These rights are automatically restored upon launch.
Some state laws require probation and parole to be completed in order to restore voting rights. In other countries, people imprisoned for certain crimes lose those rights indefinitely upon release.
The current California Constitution disqualifies people incarcerated in state or federal prisons from voting and restores those rights upon release. The law previously required felons to complete a period of parole before being eligible to vote again; Californians approved the change to remove the requirement in the 2020 constitutional amendment.
Bryan, a Los Angeles Democrat and chairman of the Assembly Elections Committee, faces a tough sell for 2/3 of the vote. While the Legislature is controlled by Democrats, the party has conservative representatives from rural areas and major progressive policies are not guaranteed to be implemented.
The committee’s Republican vice chairman, Assemblyman Tom Lackey, opposed the bill.
“Criminal actions must have consequences. Voting is a sacred privilege, not an absolute right of citizenship,” he wrote Lackey, a Republican from Southern California, on Twitter.
Associated Press writer Adam Beam in Sacramento, California, contributed.