Under North Carolina law, you can get a felony conviction for first degree murder. But you can also get a felony conviction for failing to return a rented car, illegally sharing over 100 tapes of a concert, pulling down electric wires, forgery, or bouncing a check of over $2,000. I have actually never played high stakes beach bingo, but the discovery that you could get a felony for playing beach bingo with a prize of over $50 made me feel like I hadn’t been living.

The other day I was registering voters and a big shaggy blonde fellow, surrounded by about 4 small shaggy blonde children, came over and shook his head. “I can’t vote,” he said. “Are you 18?” I asked. Yes. “Are you a citizen?” Yes. “Are you currently serving a sentence for a felony you committed?” No. “Then you can vote.”

He grabbed the clipboard, a little sheepishly at first. “I’m not a hardened criminal,” he said, looking at me sideways. “It was just stolen property.” He told me he finished up his sentence ten years ago. His coworkers, helping fix up an old restaurant, walked by and he yelled out at them, “Hey Jimmy, you know you ex-felons can vote now! Hey, Darrell, you know ex-felons can vote now!”

He was right and wrong. Ex-felons have been able to vote for a long time in North Carolina. But until last week, when he wrongly believed he was forever denied the privileges of citizenship, he was not about to talk to those four kids about politics, or read about voting deadlines, or write letters to the editor, or think about who he’d support, except in shame.

The bingo we’re playing with voter registration laws in this country is very, very high stakes. Not only are we actually disenfranchising over five million Americans, millions more wrongly think they can’t vote, or are married to and friends with still millions more who no longer think politics is something to be talked about in polite conversation. If we want an active, engaged polity, we need to change the voter registration laws.

Even for those not inclined to give convicted murderers or securities fraud-feasors the vote, the default assumption must be that everyone can vote, with only the smallest set of exceptions.
I’m writing here on the off-chance that some unemployed web wizard will start a national petition campaign to change the laws, state by state. Unfortunately, this is an area where few ex-felons are going to lead the charge.

In the meantime, you can download the bingo boards here.