The Christian Science Monitor reports today on the move to provide ex-felons with the right to vote. 37 states now allow ex-felons to vote. That leaves 13 more we need to work on. The Sentencing Project i s leading the charge:

A recent study by The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit criminal-justice advocacy organization, found that as a result of the changes since 1996, 471,000 ex-cons have had voting rights restored. But the study also estimates that 3.9 million Americans - 1 in 50 adults - can't vote. And because of the racial imbalance in the criminal justice system, a large percentage of them are minority. Indeed, 1.4 million black men are disenfranchised. That's 13 percent of the African-American male population, a figure seven times the national average.

"The irony is that 50 years after Brown v. the Board of Education ... we actually see increasing numbers of people of color losing their voting rights," says Marc Mauer of The Sentencing Project.

....The American public has a fairly clear stance. In a poll commissioned .... last year, 80 percent favored giving all ex-cons the right to vote. But only 31 percent favored extending voting rights to those currently serving their time.

As we point out here, quoting from an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, restoring the vote to ex-felons should be a priority of the Democratic party: