July 12, 2004

Zenon Quiles will take a long-delayed and much anticipated walk this Primary Day. Quiles had lost his right to vote due to a 2000 drug offense conviction, but was recently re-enfranchised after two years on probation. Quiles is an advocate for ex-offender voting rights and a plaintiff in an ACLU-NJ lawsuit, New Jersey State Conference/NAACP v. Peter Harvey, challenging the denial of the right to vote for people on probation and parole. Quiles will take back his vote at 10 AM, on June 8, at the Walnut Street Fire House in Montclair.

Voting rights of ex-offenders has never had more attention than today in New Jersey. In addition to the legal challenge concerning individuals on probation and parole, numerous organizations including the ACLU-NJ, ACORN and Common Cause have taken up the cause of educating ex-offenders about their right to vote, which is restored upon completion of a criminal sentence. The issue has become more urgent as New Jersey’s prison population has become increasingly dominated by minorities. Blacks, for example, make up some 13% of the general population and 60% of those in the criminal justice system.

“It is now well documented that, as a consequence of racial profiling, members of racial minority groups have been investigated, arrested, prosecuted and convicted in New Jersey in numbers totally disproportionate to their propensity to commit crimes.” said Deborah Jacobs, Executive Director of the ACLU-NJ.  “The consequence is that members of the African American and Latino communities are denied an equal opportunity to influence the electoral and political process.”

Currently an outreach coordinator with the ACLU-NJ, Zenon Quiles runs his own cleaning and organizing business with his wife. Father of four children, he serves as vice-chair on the Policy Council of the Montclair Child Development Center and participates in the Male Involvement Group of Montclair. He volunteers for the Seth Boyden Resource Center in Newark and as an after-school basketball team coach. Active in his community, Zenon exemplarizes the ex-offender’s full participation as an active citizen.

The ACLU-NJ has a long-standing interest in felony disenfranchisement and voting rights issues. The ACLU-NJ distributes a Get Your Vote Back kit to ex-offenders who have finished their sentence and need direction to register to vote. In addition, the ACLU-NJ has advocated for voter registration in jails, where many of the prisoners are pre-trial detainees and maintain their right to vote barring a conviction.

On June 8, Quiles says he will cast his vote for all those men and women who are on parole and probation and not allowed to express their political viewpoints.