Casting a vote is one of the most important, and powerful, actions a person can take. Americans have fought long and hard to get laws changed so that American Indians, African-Americans, and women would be granted this right. Today, there is still a segment of the population who cannot vote in some states—felons.
The Sentencing Project, using the most recent available data, has issued the report State-Level Estimates of Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States, 2010. The following key findings, taken from the report, show just how many Americans are negatively impacted by “felon disenfranchisement”:
Approximately 2.5 percent of the total U.S. voting age population – 1 of every 40 adults – is disenfranchised due to a current or previous felony conviction.
Ex-felons in the eleven states that disenfranchise people after they have completed their sentences make up about 45 percent of the entire disenfranchised population, totaling over 2.6 million people.
The number of people disenfranchised due to a felony conviction has escalated dramatically in recent decades as the population under criminal justice supervision has increased. There were an estimated 1.17 million people disenfranchised in 1976, 3.34 million in 1996, and over 5.85 million in 2010.
Rates of disenfranchisement vary dramatically by state due to broad variations in voting prohibitions. In six states – Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia – more than 7 percent of the adult population is disenfranchised.
1 of every 13 African Americans of voting age is disenfranchised, a rate more than four times greater than non-African Americans. Nearly 7.7 percent of the adult African American population is disenfranchised compared to 1.8 percent of the non-African American population.
African American disenfranchisement rates also vary significantly by state. In three states – Florida (23 percent), Kentucky (22 percent), and Virginia (20 percent) – more than one in five African Americans is disenfranchised.
The report offers a state-by-state guide that provides the disenfranchisement percentage for each state. The sentencing Project that 5.85 million Americans are currently ineligible to vote by state law. Only Maine and Vermont place no restrictions on felons who wish to vote. States with the lowest disenfranchisement rate are Massachusetts, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Utah (with a rate under five percent). States with a disenfranchise rate of over seven percent are Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Virginia.
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