NJ Spotlight’s Colleen O’Dea Reports
The Legislature took a major step toward extending the right to vote to people on probation and parole, when the Assembly on Monday passed a bill that does not go quite as far as advocates had hoped but would return about 80,000 New Jerseyans to the voter rolls.
It took 21 months for the effort to end New Jersey’s prohibition on voting for anyone still serving any part of a criminal sentence, which activists characterized as a civil rights issue when announcing it in February 2018. It was a newly introduced bill (A-5823) that passed during this lame duck session. Left out of that bill, and part of the original push, are those who are still incarcerated.