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SHOULD YOU LOSE YOUR RIGHT TO VOTE IF YOU HAVE A CRIMINAL RECORD?  
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María Constanza Costa
September 19, 2024
Nonprofit Quarterly
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_ The right to participate in the conduct of public affairs, which
includes the right to vote and to be elected, is at the very heart of
democratic governments based on the will of the people, according to
the United Nations. _

, (Pixabay)

 

As of 2022, an estimated 4.4 million people in the United States had
lost their right to vote due to felony convictions. This is equivalent
to the population of Kentucky or Oregon. A report published in June
by Human Rights Watch [[link removed]], The Sentencing
Project, [[link removed]] and the American Civil
Liberties Union’s Voting Rights Project
[[link removed]] seeks to
challenge this common practice.

The report—_Out of Step: US Policy on Voting Rights in Global
Perspective_, 
[[link removed]]authored
by a nine-person team led by Nicole Porter, senior director of
advocacy at The Sentencing Project—examines the laws of 136
countries worldwide with populations greater than 1.5 million people.

Of these, 73 rarely or never deny a person the right to vote for a
criminal conviction, and 35 never deny the right to vote based on
criminal status. Among those 35 are Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland,
South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and Taiwan.

So, how did so many US states come to deny millions the right to vote?
And how can this change? Those are key questions for the report
authors.

RACIST ROOTS OF DISENFRANCHISEMENT LAWS

Perhaps unsurprisingly, state voting rights can vary wildly. As Porter
tells _NPQ_, “On the low end in the United States, people can be
convicted of felonies when it comes to certain administrative offenses
such as financial fraud and drug possession.” She adds, “There are
several states…where people are disenfranchised for life.”

But Porter notes that on “the opposite end of that, there are
several jurisdictions within the United States where people never lose
their right to vote because of a felony conviction. That includes two
states…Maine and Vermont. And it also includes two territories:
Puerto Rico, which expanded voting rights to people completing their
prison sentences in the 1980s, and the District of Columbia, which
expanded voting rights to people completing their felony sentences in
prison a few years ago in 2020.”

These kinds of crime disenfranchisement laws in the United States date
back to the end of the Civil War. After formerly enslaved Black men
gained the right to vote through the Fifteenth Amendment
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US Constitution, state lawmakers began expanding the list of felonies
to target the African American population.

At the same time, states began revoking voting rights for any felony
conviction. Although the federal government outlawed some “Jim Crow
laws” through the Voting Rights Act of 1965, felony
disenfranchisement laws remain on the books in 48 states.

PERSISTENT DISENFRANCHISEMENT

Black Americans continue to be disproportionately arrested,
incarcerated,

and subjected to harsher sentences, including imprisonment without
parole. Jonathan Topaz, a staff attorney at the ACLU Voting Rights
Project—and another report author—also spoke with _NPQ_. He
explains that “it was a very conscious effort by the White majority
at that time to re-disenfranchise Black folks.”

Topaz adds that “criminal disenfranchisement was one of the
mechanisms along with things like poll taxes and literacy tests that
were designed, again, to limit the political power of newly
enfranchised Black folks.”

The impact on the Black electorate was and is significant. Currently,
the report indicates
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one in 19 Black Americans of voting age is disenfranchised at a rate
3.5 times that of people who are not Black. Nationally, 5.3 percent of
Black adults in the United States are disenfranchised, compared to 1.5
percent of the adult population that is not Black. More than one in 10
Black adults are disenfranchised in seven states—Alabama, Arizona,
Florida, Kentucky, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Virginia.

But not only the Black American community is affected. At least
506,000 Latinx Americans, or 1.7 percent of the voting-age Latinx
population, are also disenfranchised.

As Brian Miller, executive director of Nonprofit Vote
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people of color much more likely to be impacted by the justice system,
often incarcerated or incarcerated at notably higher rates. And the
impact of that is that if you also couple that with a rule that
prohibits ex-felons or people with criminal records from voting, then
you’re getting a double whammy. Not only the racially disparate
impact on incarceration, but also a racially disparate impact on
people’s right to vote.”

The organizations dedicated to promoting the right to vote for people
with criminal records found that in recent years, some US
jurisdictions have taken steps to restore voting rights. Most states
no longer disenfranchise people for life, and many allow people
released from prison to vote.

This is the case of Florida, which, in 2018, passed an amendment
[[link removed]] reforming
the 150-year-old constitutional text. This amendment restored voting
rights to ex-convicts, excluding those convicted of murder and serious
sexual offenses.

Before the amendment, Florida was only one of four states in the union
that automatically and permanently revoked the right to vote of anyone
convicted of a felony. However, subsequent action by the state
legislature effectively negated the constitutional amendment, and an
estimated 900,000 Floridians
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still denied the right to vote.

There are currently two states, Iowa and Kentucky, where voting rights
for former prisoners can only be restored through an individual
petition or application to the state government.

Legal restoration is only one step toward full restoration. In many
states, such as Florida, citizens who rejoin society can only vote
after paying various legal financial obligations, essentially creating
a system of paying to vote. “This policy of disenfranchising folks
for basically inability to pay these fines, fees, and costs is pretty
astonishing….Lots of states seem to condition the right to vote on
your ability to pay, which is really anathema to democratic values and
principles,” says Topaz.

Misinformation from election officials about legal reforms has also
hindered voter registration. As Porter explains, there is “a lack of
information from formal government agencies that notify people of
changes in laws, and even a lack of understanding by officials
themselves. Other barriers are the fact that for eligible incarcerated
voters, the logistics of being registered to vote, having accurate
voter registration information so they can access their ballot leading
up to the election cycle is also a significant barrier.”

INTERNATIONAL TRENDS

Globally, the trend is toward greater inclusion of people with
criminal records—with voting rights protected in a growing number of
countries. For example, in 2014, Egypt repealed a sweeping law that
indefinitely banned anyone convicted of a crime from voting. In 2020,
Uganda’s Supreme Court upheld the constitutional right to vote for
all citizens over 18, including incarcerated people.

In 2022, Tanzania’s Supreme Court declared unconstitutional a law
that disenfranchised people sentenced to more than six months in
prison, saying it was too broad and inconsistent with the country’s
constitution. That same year, the Chilean government removed voting
barriers for detained people, allowing them to vote in the 2022 and
2023 constitutional referendums.

BROADER IMPLICATIONS

The right to participate in the conduct of public affairs, which
includes the right to vote and to be elected, is at the very heart of
democratic governments based on the will of the people, according to
the United Nations [[link removed]]. Genuine
elections are necessary and fundamental components of an environment
that protects and promotes human rights.

As Miller explains, even public safety benefits from increased access
to the polls: “There are studies that have shown that when people
start voting, there’s a recognition that they’re part of the
community and that the likelihood of them reentering the criminal
justice system is notably lower. If you permanently disenfranchise
someone, you’re permanently putting them on the fringe and the
chances of them reentering the justice system is higher.”

Miller points out that even if the motivation is not about enabling
full civic participation and instead is narrowly focused on reducing
crime, “we should be allowing folks to fully participate in the
democratic process.”

_María Constanza Costa is a political scientist, journalist, and
associate professor for the seminar “Islamism, Nationalism, and
Popular Mobilization in the Middle East” at the Faculty of Social
Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires. She is also an
international news columnist at Panamá Revista._

_The Nonprofit Quarterly (NPQ) envisions a world in which we live in
an active democracy whose values are fully grounded in human rights,
economic and social justice, racial equity, and thriving communities.
Our mission is to advance conversations and practice in civil
society—as manifested in nonprofits, social movements, and
philanthropy._

* voting rights
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* Mass Incarceration
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* criminal justice
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* racial disparities
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