With the stroke of a pen, Gov. Phil Murphy restored the right to vote to thousands of New Jerseyans on probation and parole.

Antonne Henshaw is on parole for life for murder after serving 30 years in prison.

“I could vote in prison for my elected representatives to represent my issues and grievances, but when I came to the community I couldn’t. So my actual first time participating in a democracy was inside the prison. I’ve never voted before in society,” Henshaw said.

The Brennan Center for Justice says New Jersey has become the 19th state to allow such voting.

“It includes red states like Indiana, Montana, and even Utah, so this is not and should not be one party or the other. This is the right thing to do,” Murphy said.

“I am happy to go around the country and tell other mayors that in New Jersey, if you’re on parole or probation, you still have the right to vote,” said Newark Mayor Ras Baraka.

“This is the work we set out to Trenton to do, to put new voters, or people who should be voting back on the rolls,” said Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter.

In 1844, New Jersey disenfranchised those on probation and parole. On Wedneday, the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice’s #1844NoMore became law.

“If you want to build a democracy that’s got legitimacy you want to increase that participation in it and that’s what happened today,” said Ryan Haygood, president and CEO for the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.

The voter registration law takes effect 90 days from the governor signing the bill, or March 17, when some 83,000 more New Jerseysans can register to vote.

“We’re going to make sure that everybody who now has this right knows how to turn out, knows how to find information and is ready to exercise that right,” said Jesse Burns, executive director of the New Jersey League of Women Voters.

Murphy also signed into law the expungement of criminal convictions of those who have a clean slate for at least 10 years.

“We are allowing residents with drug and low-level offenses to have their record expeditiously expunged. […] That’s including online, and without an application fee so they can have a meaningful chance at a good job, an education and a strong future,” Murphy said. “I am proud that we are giving New Jersey one of the most progressive expungement laws in the nation.”

Sen. Sandra Cunningham choked up talking about the meaning of her bill becoming law.

“No matter what else we did, we came back to, ‘We have to do something to give people a second chance,'” she said.

The new law also tasks the state with creating an automated clean slate expungement system. Murphy said his second chance bill signings fulfill his campaign pledge to right social wrongs in New Jersey.