How many people does felon disenfranchisement affect?
What are the laws governing felon disenfranchisement?
What are the rules governing felon re-enfranchisement in the
states?
What are some of the problems associated with felon purges of
voting lists?
What are the arguments against felon disenfranchisement?
How many people does felon disenfranchisement
affect?
Today, over 4.65 million Americans are barred from voting because of
felon disenfranchisement laws.
Sources/More Information:
About Felon Re-enfranchisement
(Demos)
What are the laws governing felon disenfranchisement?
Each state has different rules regarding when and whether individuals
can vote once they have been convicted of a felony; individuals who are convicted
of federal felonies fall under the felon disenfranchisement laws of the state
of their residence. Thirteen states permanently disenfranchise convicted felons;
eighteen states restore voting rights after completion of prison, parole, and
probation; four states re-enfranchise felons after they have been released from
prison and have completed parole; thirteen allow felons who have been released
from prison to vote, and two states do not disenfranchise felons at all.
Sources/More Information:
Felony Disenfranchisement
Laws in the United States Fact Sheet 
(Sentencing Project) July 2005
What are the rules governing felon re-enfranchisement
in the states?
As with disenfranchisement laws, re-enfranchisement procedures also vary from
state to state. In some states, it is very difficult for an ex-felon to get
back on the voting list once he or she has been disenfranchised. Though some
states automatically restore voting rights to all individuals once they have
completed their sentence and related requirements, many others require felons
to petition to have their rights restored before they can register.
Sources/More Information:
State-by-State
Felon Voting Legislation
(Electionline.org)
What are some of the problems associated
with felon purges of voting lists?
The process by which states disenfranchise convicted felons often causes
the state to wrongly disenfranchise citizens who legitimately have the right
to vote. The felony conviction databases that elections officials use to create
their "purge lists" provide extremely limited and sometimes inaccurate or out-of-date
information. According to a study conducted by the American Civil Liberties
Union, a quarter of the 15 states surveyed had no legislation governing the
amount of identifying information that must accompany felony conviction data;
half of the states require that a felony conviction entry include the individual's
name and address only, and the latter is often unreliable, if the individual
moves. And only one state had passed legislation requiring that overturned felony
convictions be noted in the database. Such a law would have been useful in Florida,
which in 2004 erroneously purged 8000 individuals from its lists who had been
convicted of misdemeanors, not felonies.
In many cases there is insufficient data to positively verify a match between
a name in the felony conviction database and a name on the voter registration
list. For example, if an individual has moved away from the address under which
he or she registered to vote, the only piece of information election officials
can use to verify a match is the name. This problem has resulted in countless
people being purged from the voter rolls who had the right to vote. None of
the states surveyed had passed legislation outlining matching standards or procedures.
In addition, two-thirds of the states surveyed do not notify individuals when
they have been purged from the voter rolls to provide them with opportunity
to rectify any errors or misunderstandings.
Sources/More Information:
Purged!
Will Eligible Voters Be Purged From Election Rolls?
(ACLU, Demos, Right to Vote) October 2004
What are the arguments against felon
disenfranchisement?
Once individuals convicted of felonies have served their time, the criminal
justice system is devoted to rehabilitating them as active members in their
communities; but denying these individuals the right to vote prevents them from
participating in the civic life of their communities. The United States is the
only democracy in the world that bans its felons from voting; Denmark, France,
Israel, Japan, Kenya, Norway, Peru, Sweden, and Zimbabwe all allow their prisoners
to vote.
In addition, felon disenfranchisement disproportionately affects minorities
who have traditionally lacked government representation. More than 13 percent
of all African-American men are disenfranchised, and African-American men make
up more than 36 percent of the total disenfranchised population. The Latino
community is also disproportionately affected by disenfranchisement laws: 16
percent of Latino men will serve time in prison, compared with 4.4 percent of
white men.
Sources/More Information:
Punishing
at the Polls: The Case Against Disenfranchising Citizens With Felony Convictions
Alex Ewald (Demos) 2003
Losing the Vote: The Impact
of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States
(Sentencing Project, Human Rights Watch) 1998
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