States that will have SLAVERY on ballot in the midterms: Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont voters will address 13th Amendment loophole that allows involuntary servitude in prison
- The 13th Amendment outlawed slavery except as punishment for a crime
- There are roughly 800,000 incarcerated people who are forced to work
- Only Rhode Island, Colorado, Utah and Nebraska have explicit anti-forced prison labor rules, with Rhode Island’s passing in 1842
- Alabama voters’ ballot measure goes a step further and could ban ‘all racist language’ from the Southern state’s constitution
- Louisiana’s is murkier, prohibiting ‘the use of involuntary servitude except as it applies to the otherwise lawful administration of criminal justice’
Voters in five states will decide whether to close a loophole in the Constitution allowing for slavery as a criminal punishment in this year’s November midterm elections.
Involuntary servitude was made mostly illegal by the 13th Amendment in 1865 – except for people who are serving out criminal sentences.
The slavery ‘loophole’ has been a central focus for prison reform and mass incarceration activists.
On November 8, the residents of Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont will vote on ballot measures in their respective states to close that loophole.
Vermont was the first state to ban slavery when the practice was outlawed in 1777 – but its state constitution has an exception for people ‘bound by law for the payment of debts, damages, fines, costs, or the like.’
It’s one of 20 states with such clauses.
Colorado, Utah and Nebraska passed similar ballot measures in 2018. And five other states – New Jersey, California, Texas, Florida and Ohio – are gearing up for such votes as well.
Rhode Island is the only state to have banned forced labor as punishment for a crime when it was written into the state constitution in 1842.
Five states are voting on whether to outlaw forced labor as a form of punishment on November 8, after Colorado, Utah and Nebraska had similar ballot measures in 2018
Each of the five ballot initiatives it in November could see the prison loophole closed in those states.
In Louisiana, however, the outcome would be murkier.
Its ballot initiative prohibits ‘the use of involuntary servitude except as it applies to the otherwise lawful administration of criminal justice.’
Republican Louisiana state Rep. Alan Seabaugh told PEW Research that he believes the measure ‘technically allows slavery’ and will have little impact on state law.
‘It’s essentially just symbolic. It says what’s already on the books – although potentially worse,’ Seabaugh told the outlet.
Alabamans will go a step further, however, and vote on whether to remove ‘all racist language’ from their state constitution.
It’s one of several hot button topics that voters across the country will weigh in on during the November midterm elections
Closing the prison loophole in the 13th Amendment would be a massive victory for today’s civil rights movement.
Last year, Democrat Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Democratic House Rep. Nikema Williams of Georgia introduced a constitutional amendment that would have outlawed incarcerated slave labor on the federal level.
‘The loophole in our constitution’s ban on slavery not only allowed slavery to continue, but launched an era of discrimination and mass incarceration that continues to this day,’ Merkley said at the time.
Out of roughly 1.2 million people in federal and state prisons, approximately 800,000 are forced to work for as little as 50 cents per hour, and in some states, for nothing at all.
The data comes from a June 2022 report by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The forced labor forms an industry worth at least $11 billion, according to the report.
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