The day after he mailed in his ballot, Virgil Dixon said was sitting in his apartment in Albuquerque, looking at the Sandia Mountains through his bedroom window. “Oh man, it’s good to be back home,” Dixon recalls telling himself – physically in the same place, but still a world away from the lost feeling he felt when he couldn’t vote. (Photo by Bright Quashie for Source New Mexico)
Virgil Dixon was born in New Mexico but had been away for two decades moving around the country, following his son and grandchild to remain close to them.
Dixon, 71, made it a priority to register to vote and was able to cast ballots everywhere he lived: in Iowa, Oregon and Minnesota.
Those states, like New Mexico, allow people like Dixon – who was once convicted of a felony – to vote.
But after he returned to his home state in 2022, he tried to register to vote the following year and was denied his right, because he was convicted of possessing cocaine more than two decades earlier.
