An estimated 55,000 Mississippians are not able to vote after being convicted of one of 24 specific felonies that result in disenfranchisement, and the process to regain that basic right of citizenship is not only long but highly dependent on outside factors.

While many states allow disenfranchised voters to regain their right to vote after completing their sentence, paying off fines or reaching other rehabilitation milestones, Mississippi disenfranchises voters for life.

Under the state’s current system, those who have lost their right to vote have but two paths to see their rights restored: a governor’s pardon, the last of which was issued in 2012, or by getting a bill through both chambers of the Legislature with a minimum of two-thirds vote.

The first step to get a bill passed is to get a legislator to introduce the legislation. That assumes disenfranchised voters know who their legislators are, have time and transportation to meet them and can convince the representative or senator to help them.

Thousands of bills are filed during the state Legislature’s session each year, and pre-established deadlines cull many of them without any action taken. Should a disenfranchised voter convince their legislator to introduce a suffrage bill to restore their rights, the volume of legislation alone makes the success of such a bill remote.

The success or failure of a suffrage bill can also be impacted by what other issues the Legislature is taking up. Big issues such as Medicaid expansion, tax cuts and medical marijuana, prompt much-needed discussion but also distract from lower impact actions like restoring an individual’s right to vote.

All of these factors add up to create a pathway to have voting rights restored that is highly volatile, uncertain and unequal. Under the current process, two individuals with identical circumstances can reach wildly different outcomes due to things far outside their control.

At what point voting rights should be restored, who should be eligible and the process for doing so are all great questions for the state Legislature to consider if/when it revisits the disenfranchisement issue. It cannot be denied, however, that the current suffrage process is influenced far too strongly by outside factors and the political process to be anywhere close to fair.

A bill introduced last year would have ended Mississippi’s system of disenfranchisement by restoring voting rights to nonviolent felons after they complete their sentences, but that too succumbed to the arduous legislative process.

Regardless of what point at which legislators choose to allow disenfranchised voters to regain their rights, a clear, fair, executable and repeatable pathway is needed to replace the roll-the-dice-and-pray method that we have now.