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Disenfranchisement and Census Issues

A 'Crazy-Quilt' of Tiny Pieces: State and Local Administration of American Criminal Disenfranchisement Laws
By Alec Ewald, Union College. A new report published by The Sentencing Project finds widespread confusion and errors in the implementation of felony disenfranchisement laws. Among the report's key findings are: more than one-third (37%) of local elections officials interviewed misunderstand state eligibility law. The report concludes that disenfranchisement is a "time consuming, expensive practice" and calls on state policymakers to review voting restrictions, particularly for non-incarcerated people. The Sentencing Project, November 2005.
http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/crazyquilt.pdf

Barred for Life: Voting Rights Restoration in Permanent Disenfranchisement States
By Marc Mauer and Tushar Kansal. Examines the rights-restoration process in the 14 states in which disenfranchisement may last for a lifetime. The study finds that in 11 of these states, less than 3% of disenfranchised persons have had their rights restored in recent years. The study identifies a range of obstacles in most states, including overly cumbersome processes, lengthy and confusing waiting periods, inappropriate character tests, and inadequate data collection.
http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/barredforlife.pdf

Connecticut: Parole Disenfranchisement Analysis
The state of Connecticut expanded voting rights to people on probation in 2001, but parolees are still disenfranchised in the state. Reform efforts are underway to repeal the ban on parolee voting. A new briefing paper by The Sentencing Project analyzes the effect of current policy in the state, and finds that 77% of the affected population is African American and Latino. In addition, Connecticut has experienced a 198% rise in its parole population since 1997, 25 times the average growth rate nationally, thus dramatically increasing the number of citizens who have lost the right to vote.
http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/ct-disenfranchisement.pdf

A Decade of Reform: Felony Disenfranchisement Policy in the U.S.
October 2006. The Sentencing Project has released a new report revealing a new wave of reforms of state felony voting laws and growing momentum toward restoring voting rights. Findings published in "A Decade of Reform: Felony Disenfranchisement Policy" in the United States disclose that since 1997, 16 states have implemented policy reforms that have reduced the restrictiveness of these laws, and more than 600,000 people in seven states have regained their voting rights. The report also states: U.S. disenfranchisement laws remain among the world's most severe despite public opinion polls showing 80% support for restoring the vote to those who have completed their sentences. During this year alone, 73 bills on felony disenfranchisement were introduced in 22 states and 85% of these initiatives sought to expand voting rights. More than 5 million Americans still will be banned from voting this Election Day; three quarters of those banned - 3.9 million - are living in the community. An estimated 1 in 12 African Americans is disenfranchised, a rate nearly five times the rate of non-African Americans.
http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/FVR_Decade_Reform.pdf

Diminished Voting Power in the Latino Community: The Impact of Felony Disenfranchisement Laws in Ten Targeted States
MALDEF, 2003.
http://realcostofprisons.org/materials/maldef-rpt.pdf

Expanding the Vote: State Felony Disenfranchisement Reform, 1997- 2008
Documents a reform movement over the past eleven years that has resulted in more than 760,000 citizens having regained their right to vote. The report found that since 1997, 19 states have amended felony disenfranchisement policies in an effort to reduce their restrictiveness and expand voter eligibility. The report finds: Nine states either repealed or amended lifetime disenfranchisement laws.Two states expanded voting rights to persons under community supervision (probation and parole).Five states eased the restoration process for persons seeking to have their right to vote restored after completing sentence. The Sentencing Project. September 2008
http://sentencingproject.org/PublicationDetails.aspx?PublicationID=623

Felon Disenfranchisement and Democracy in the Late Jim Crow Era
Arguing that there is no reasonable justification behind felon disenfranchisement, "Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy" (Oxford University Press 2006) by Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen is reviewed in the Ohio State University Journal of Criminal Law, entitled "Felon Disenfranchisement and Democracy in the Late Jim Crow Era," by University of Arizona Professor Gabriel J. Chin, and focuses on the history and policy behind disenfranchisement. (November 2007)
http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/osjcl/Articles/Volume5_1/Chin-PDF.pdf

The Modern-Day Poll Tax: How Economic Sanctions Block Access to the Polls
An article by Erika Wood and Neema Trivedi of the Brennan Center for Justice in the Clearinghouse Review, June 2007. The article details the over two-centuries-old tradition of disenfranchisement and how it became a practice in targeting formerly incarcerated individuals. "The spread of felony disenfranchisement laws in the late 1800s was part of a larger backlash against the adoption of the Reconstruction Amendments. Despite newfound eligibility, many freedmen remained practically disenfranchised as a result of organized efforts to prevent them from voting," the article states.
http://sentencingproject.org/Admin/...ications/fd_clearinghousereview.pdf

NY Board of Elections Survey: Misinformation Costs Thousands of Eligible New Yorkers Their Vote
Survey of 63 county boards of elections shows that fully one-third are systematically and improperly preventing formerly incarcerated persons from registering to vote. March 2006.
http://www.demos.org/page440.cfm

Prisoners of the Census: Electoral and Financial Consequences of Counting Prisoners Where They Go, Not Where They Come From
By Eric Lotke and Peter Wagner, 2005.
http://www.library.law.pace.edu/PLR24-2/PLR218.pdf

ProCon.org
Should felons be allowed to vote? This site presents in a simple, nonpartisan, pro-con format, responses to the core question "Should felons be allowed to vote?"
http://felonvoting.procon.org/viewtopic.asp

A Study of Felon and Misdemeanant Voter Participation in North Carolina
Analyzes the effects of the growing number of felony convictions in the United States (more than one million per year) on political participation by studying the impact of convictions on voter registration and turnout in North Carolina.

The study also proposes a model of how crime policies affect participation that encompasses the effects of legal disenfranchisement along with other mechanisms which may suppress participation. Burch finds that before their convictions, people with felony convictions had lower registration and turnout rates than people who had never been convicted but that felony convictions further depress registration and turnout rates. The Sentencing Project February 2007.
http://sentencingproject.org/PublicationDetails.aspx?PublicationID=576

Violations of Article 25: Voting Rights
A 2006 report by The Sentencing Project to the United Nations' Human Rights Committee regarding the United States' compliance with dictates specified in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
http://www.sentencingproject.org/pdfs/violationsofarticle25.pdf