John,

The Sentencing Project’s new brief, “Expanding Electoral Engagement Among Justice‑Impacted People,” identifies effective strategies used to mobilize justice-impacted communities to vote.

For many justice-impacted people, removing legal barriers to voting is necessary for full participation in democracy, yet eliminating legal obstacles alone would not be sufficient. Electoral participation among eligible voters with felony convictions appears to be very low relative to overall turnout.

Our new brief highlights successful strategies to achieve meaningful gains in voter registration and turnout following outreach initiatives, as well as ongoing challenges. Key takeaways include:

Justice-impacted people can be mobilized to vote.
A growing body of research finds that when people have access to the franchise, they vote when they think voting is important, and because someone asked them to.
The more personalized the outreach, the better.
Justice-impacted people may need support in understanding whether they are eligible to vote, and they may also need to be convinced that voting is valuable.
Organizers, community groups, and academics can conduct research on effective strategies.
This brief can inform how nonpartisan organizations with limited resources should structure their outreach initiatives more effectively.

With the proper resources and outreach, the vote can be restored to people impacted by the justice system.