Four million Americans will be unable to vote in the November election due to felony criminal records, according to a new research report led by Dr. Ryan Larson, 鶹ƵAPK professor of criminal justice and forensic science.
The report, “,” published by and co-authored by Molly Hauf ’24 and Olivia Nesgoda, is a continuation of the research team’s previous Locked Out reports that details the scope of felony disenfranchisement policies in the United States, and uses demographic methods to estimate the number of individuals disenfranchised as of election day 2024.
The report finds that 4 million Americans are denied the right to vote due to a felony-level criminal record as of election day 2024, which comprises 1.7% of the voting eligible population in America. Seven out of every 10 individuals disenfranchised in the United States are living in their communities, having fully completed their sentences or remaining supervised while on felony probation or parole.
“In certain close elections, in states with high-disenfranchisement, it can play a political role – there is some research that is indicative of that,” Dr. Larson said.
But more commonly, lifelong disenfranchisement can have profound psychological effects that hinder reintegration into society.
“Not having the right to vote, it can create an emotional detachment that signals disenfranchised voters as something other, that’s not fully a citizen or not worthy of full participation as an adult in democracy,” Dr. Larson said. “Many of those are individuals who are sending their kids to public schools, are participating in social and political institutions but don’t have a say in how those institutions are run.”
A key finding shows that, given extant racial disparities in punishment, felony disenfranchisement policies have a racialized impact where the rate for African Americans is 4.5%, more than triple that for non-African Americans.
The report is also the first to estimate the impact of felony disenfranchisement by gender. Dr. Larson and Molly Hauf, as part of 鶹ƵAPK’s Summer Collaborative Undergraduate Program, developed the methodology for the gender-estimates included in the report, estimating that approximately 764,000 women are disenfranchised, comprising approximately one-fifth of the total disenfranchised population. This suggests that approximately 3.2 million men or 2.7% of the male voting eligible population is disenfranchised, consistent with the overrepresentation of men in the criminal legal system.
The most popular solution is state-led re-enfranchisement for individuals on probation and parole, an approach that was adopted in Minnesota last year.
“Other states have moved toward the prison and jail only model, which only disenfranchises people who are incarcerated but not people who are out in the community and under supervision,” Dr. Larson said. “This approach is in lockstep with public opinion. People are in favor of giving people who are not currently incarcerated the right to vote.”
