Felon Disenfranchisement
After Paying Their Debt to Society, Millions Remain Voteless
Most legal barriers to U.S. citizens' suffrage have been removed over the past century. Women gained the vote in 1920. Racial minorities had their ballot rights ensured by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Eighteen-year-olds won it in 1971. Yet one group, convicted felons, remains largely without rights when it comes to political participation.
Today, in 48 of the 50 states, felons are prevented from voting while in prison. In 35 states parolees or those on probation are also barred from voting. And in 11 states, some categories of felons face such big impediments to registering to vote upon completion of their sentences that for all practical purposes they are disenfranchised.
That's an improvement over 2000, when this nationwide issue first gained attention. That year Florida was estimated to have disenfranchised between 750,000 and 1 million residents. Back then, 14 states permanently disenfranchised people with felony convictions. Even after paying their debt to society they remained voteless.
As recently as 2004, 5.3 million Americans couldn't vote as a result of felony records, according to University of Minnesota sociologist Christopher Uggen. In that election, a staggering 13 percent of African-American men nationally were barred from voting. In Florida and Alabama, the number was over 30 percent; in Mississippi, Iowa, New Mexico, Wyoming and Virginia, 20 to 25 percent of black adult males were disenfranchised. That compares with a national disenfranchisement rate of 2.4 percent for the overall adult population.
Today, following years of grass-roots organizing, the situation has marginally improved. The Washington, D.C.-based Sentencing Project says that two states, Virginia and Kentucky, essentially disenfranchise all residents with felony convictions, and it estimates that nine states permanently bar some felons from voting. Several states have modified their laws: In 2005, Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack signed an executive order restoring the vote to 50,000 ex-felons; a modification of Maryland's law in 2007 restored the vote to another 50,000; changes in Florida that went into effect in 2007 re-enfranchised more than 100,000 voters; and New Mexico restored the vote to nearly 40,000 people. Lawsuits in Washington, Tennessee and Arizona are attempting to force those states to change their disenfranchisement provisions.
Yet as impressive as the formal changes have been, in practice these reforms have been enforced only haphazardly. Local elections officials often still provide erroneous information about the re-enfranchisement process. Public education efforts have been minimal, meaning many newly eligible voters remain unclear about their status. Hoping to bypass the smorgasbord of state laws, Representative John Conyers, Democrat of Michigan, and Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, are sponsoring the Democracy Restoration Act, which would restore the vote nationwide to ex-felons who have completed their sentences. While such a law would apply only to federal elections, observers believe its passage would signal the end of permanent disenfranchisement statutes around the country.
The "next frontier," says the Sentencing Project's executive director, Marc Mauer, is to encourage states to allow parolees and those on probation to vote. In the past couple of years, Connecticut and Rhode Island have moved toward this, and legislators in Minnesota and New Jersey have expressed interest in similar legislation.