All citizens, regardless of whether they have a felony conviction, should have the freedom to vote.
But felony disenfranchisement laws, which take away someone’s freedom to vote if they have been convicted of a felony, have long been a stain on American democracy.
They proliferated in the United States as an intentional scheme to strip Black Americans of their freedom to vote and continue to disproportionately silence Black voters.
Today, more than 4 million Americans are denied a voice in our democracy because of felony disenfranchisement laws. These Americans are members of their communities, but they have no say in the future of those communities.
That’s why Campaign Legal Center (CLC) supports “universal enfranchisement” bills that give people who are currently or formerly incarcerated the freedom to vote.
So far, only Vermont, Maine, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have laws in place protecting the right to vote for people with a felony conviction, even when they are incarcerated.
A majority of states let individuals who have served their time and left prison restore their right to vote, but there is still a long way to go in combatting felony disenfranchisement nationwide.
CLC has supported bills in Massachusetts, Oregon, Connecticut, Illinois, Washington and New Mexico that would restore the right to vote to incarcerated individuals. And we’ve litigated against laws and policies that aim to make the rights restoration process harder for voters in Tennessee, Louisiana, New Mexico and Alabama because our democracy works best when every voter can participate in it.
Felony disenfranchisement also serves no legitimate purpose within the criminal legal system and actually hinders rehabilitation and re-entry. Research has shown that giving individuals impacted by the criminal legal system the freedom to vote promotes public safety.
Abolishing felony disenfranchisement laws also helps prevent "de facto" disenfranchisement by giving everyone the freedom to vote, regardless of their experience with the criminal legal system.
De facto disenfranchisement happens when there is confusion and misinformation around the rules for voting after being convicted of a felony. This can lead many people with past convictions — and the election officials in their communities — to wrongly believe a voter cannot register or cast a ballot, even if they are eligible.
Felony disenfranchisement laws are rooted in efforts to silence Black and brown voters by denying them the freedom to vote. These laws proliferated during the Jim Crow era with the explicit purpose of preventing Black Americans from voting.
Disenfranchisement laws still serve that purpose today, stripping Black citizens of the freedom to vote at more than three times the rate of the rest of the voting-age population nationwide.
It is time for America to live up to its promise of democracy for all. We can do that by passing laws that end felony disfranchisement and guarantee every American has the freedom to vote. People with felony convictions can find out if they are eligible to vote by using CLC’s free, confidential tool at RestoreYourVote.org.