The constitutionality of one of the nation's strictest curbs on felon voting was debated in a federal appeals court Tuesday.
A coalition of groups on both the left and right, from the ACLU and NAACP to the libertarian Cato Institute, have joined the cause of almost 200,000 Mississippians who have done their time but may never vote again without a governor's pardon or a reprieve from the Legislature. The state says it has almost limitless leeway under the Constitution to set those parameters.
However the case gets decided by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, a subsequent ruling by the Supreme Court could provide definitive word on the future of expanded voting rights for convicts, which has emerged as one of the top democracy reform causes of the decade.
At the oral arguments, the six felon plaintiffs asserted that a lifetime ban on their voting is a form of cruel and unusual punishment that violates the Eighth Amendment. They also argued that the law violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution because when it was first adopted, in 1868, the clear intent was to prevent as many black people as possible from voting and the law still affects them disproportionately.
Mississippi is among just 10 states that disenfranchise felons for long periods, sometimes forever, even once they have completed their probation and parole after prison. As a result, 9 percent of the state's adults may not vote, which is triple the national average. The number of African-Americans in that group is 127,000, or 16 percent of the black electorate, according to the Sentencing Project, which advocates for criminal justice reform.
The state Constitution took the vote away from those convicted of any of 10 felonies including murder, forgery and bigamy. Fourteen years ago the state attorney general added another dozen crimes to the list, from timber larceny to carjacking.
A convict may vote again only if pardoned by the governor or if a suffrage bill is passed just for them by two-thirds of the House and Senate. Eighteen such measures were introduced last year and none got a vote.
"With extremely limited and arbitrary exceptions, a citizen convicted in a Mississippi state court of a disenfranchising felony will never again vote in the state, no matter how minor the underlying crime or how long the citizen may live after sentence completion," the plaintiffs say in a brief produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
"There is no question that the U.S. Constitution expressly approves of the right of a State to disenfranchise felons — including permanently," the state argues in reply brief, and besides the plaintiffs have not proved any "present-day discriminatory effects."
In its brief, the Cato Institute says the roster of crimes on the list for permanent disenfranchisement is unconstitutionally arbitrary.
"For every crime on the list there is a similar or even worse crime not on the list. Check fraud means permanent disenfranchisement. But credit card fraud carries no similar penalty," the group argued. "By disenfranchising individuals for minor crimes, Mississippi drastically departs from the states that understand permanent disenfranchisement for what it is — among the most severe penalties our society can inflict."
The state Constitution that detailed the initial list of felonies is the same document that also allowed the state House to pick a governor in some circumstances. Many of the same groups representing the prisoners have also sued in state court to have that system nullified as unconstitutionally discretionary to black voters.
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.