Another big moment for efforts to expand the voting rights of former prisoners will come in November, when Californians decide whether almost 50,000 parolees should be given access to the ballot box.
Sponsors of the referendum, which last week won final legislative approval for a spot on the ballot, say they're confident the vote will go their way. That would add the nation's most populous state to the roster of 16 that permit felons to vote as soon as they get out of prison.
Restoring the franchise to ex-convicts has become a top cause of civil rights groups, who say democracy is enhanced when political power is given back to people who have paid their debt to society. The campaign has gained additional momentum this summer from the nationwide protests against police violence and systemic racism.
Resistance to the idea comes mainly from Republicans, who say the ability to vote should not be granted too easily to violent or repeat offenders. But there's also clearly partisan politics at work. About 56 percent of the nation's prison population is Black or Latino — double the share of the population overall — and they vote decidedly Democratic.
Still, more than 2 million felons have seen their voting rights expanded in the past decade thanks to actions by state legislatures and gubernatorial orders. In the last year, for example, laws enacted in Nevada and Colorado did what the California measure would accomplish and allowed a combined 87,000 people on parole to vote again.
Iowa is the only state left where felons lose the right to cast a ballot for life, unless the governor steps in, and last month Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds promised to sign an executive order before the election restoring the right to vote to about 60,000 people with felony convictions.
In the most important referendum on the topic so far, Floridians voted overwhelmingly in 2018 to allow 1.4 million criminals to cast ballots after completing both parole and probation — the law in almost half the states now, including California.
Thousands are now registering in the presidential battleground while GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis appeals a federal judge's May ruling that struck down a state law, enacted a year ago, requiring felons to pay all their court-ordered financial obligations before voting.
California was one of the first states to restore any sort of political rights to the formerly incarcerated, adopting a referendum in 1974 allowing felons to vote after both probation and parole were complete. That is too strict by today's standards, sponsors of the ballot measure say.
The referendum "gives Californians the chance to right a wrong and restore voting rights for a marginalized community and people of color," said Democratic state Rep. Kevin McCarty, whose bill passed the House easily last fall and cleared the Senate by a lopsided 28-9 last week. "This is good for democracy and good for public safety."
Republican state Sen. Jim Nielsen called the proposal a "criminal injustice" policy because former criminals should be "subject to consequences for their behavior."
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.