From The Sentencing Project:
Voting eligibility and a person’s involvement in the criminal legal system have a historical but unnatural association in the United States. Some state laws dating
back over 100 years, and motivated by racist ideology, permanently ban people convicted of a felony from voting, and almost all states have long prevented voting by people in prison. Over the last 50 years the country’s investment in mass incarceration not only staggeringly increased the prison population and the community of people with a criminal record but increased the number of people banned from voting due to a felony conviction.1 As a result, over 4.6 million Americans with a felony conviction were disenfranchised as of 2022,2 disproportionately impacting Black and Latinx residents.
Despite the stark consequences of mass incarceration and voter isenfranchisement,3
the advocacy of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated activists, organizers,
legislative champions, and others have successfully fought to pass reforms to expand voting rights to justice-impacted individuals. These changes, both administrative and statutory in recent decades, coupled by recent modest declines in the population of incarcerated people and those under community supervision
reduced the total number of people disenfranchised by
24% since reaching its peak in 2016.
Read the full report here.
|
|
|
|
