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Expanding Voting Rights to All Citizens
in the Era of Mass Incarceration
In order to strengthen democracy and address significant racial disparities, states
must pass reforms establishing universal voting for people impacted by the criminal
legal system.
5.2 million people in the United States are currently
denied access to the vote because of a felony conviction. The number of people disenfranchised has grown,
from 1.2 million in 1976, as a product of mass incarceration and supervision. Of people denied the vote,
one in four (1,240,000) are currently incarcerated.1 While
many states have expanded access to the vote for
people who have completed their sentences, only DC
has joined Maine, Vermont, and Puerto Rico by granting
full voting rights to people in prison. In order to strengthen democracy and address significant racial disparities,
states must pass reforms establishing universal voting
for people impacted by the criminal legal system.
The United States maintains far greater restrictions on
voting while in prison than any other democratic country
in the world. The Supreme Court of Canada has twice
ruled in favor of protecting voting rights for people in
prison, stating that the “denial of the right to vote on
the basis of attributed moral unworthiness is inconsistent with the respect for the dignity of every person that
lies at the heart of Canadian democracy.”2 Five years
after the fall of Apartheid, the Constitutional Court of
South Africa ensured voting rights for people in prison.3

DISENFRANCHISEMENT BORN OF RACIST
LAWS, POLICIES, AND PRACTICES
The United States has failed to reckon with disenfranchisement’s deep roots in the racist Jim Crow-era. When
African Americans gained the right to vote following
the Civil War, many states enacted literacy tests, poll
taxes, and expanded the number of crimes classified
as a felony. Each of these barriers were intended to
prevent African Americans from voting. While the federal
government officially outlawed some Jim Crow-era
tactics in the Voting Rights Act (1965), felony disenfranchisement laws remain with us to this day.

Disenfranchised People in U.S. Prisons, 2020
Total: 1.2 million

Latinx
17%
Black
39%
All Others
44%

As the United States maintains the highest incarceration
rate and largest prison population in the world, outdated and undemocratic voting restrictions continue to
dilute political representation. In fact, advocates of
disenfranchisement have stated this goal in clear terms.
In 2002, during a hearing on the voting rights of people
with a prior felony conviction, Senator Mitch McConnell
argued that re-enfranchisement would “dilute the vote
of law-abiding citizens.”4 Such positions are not only
deeply out of touch with global democratic norms, but
are linked to the history of racially-motivated voter
suppression.
No one is more aware of this reality than people in
prison. Tony Lewis, Sr., a Washington, DC resident who
had his voting rights restored in 2020, remarked, “A lot
of Black people have been beaten and killed for this
right to vote.” When asked about how he would feel
casting his first vote from prison he responded, “still
being a citizen of our community Washington, DC, and
to know that I have a say, that’s just going to be such

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an amazing feeling…something that I never expected
to see or experience while being incarcerated.”5 Restoring voting rights is an essential step to ensuring racial
equality and strengthening democracy.

UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE PROMOTES RACIAL
EQUITY AND STRENGTHENS DEMOCRACY
Felony disenfranchisement weakens the political
power of communities of color, even among people
who do not have a felony conviction.6 Nationally,
39% of people disenfranchised in prisons are African
American, whereas African Americans make up 13%
of the nation’s population. This disparity diminishes
the voting power of the Black electorate as a whole.
Establishing universal voting would prevent racial
disparities in the criminal legal system from causing
disparities in political representation.
People in prison are counted when drawing electoral
districts that determine political representation, even
though most lack the right to vote. In many states,
people in prison are counted in the jurisdiction where
they are incarcerated, rather than the jurisdiction they
call home. This process, known as prison gerrymandering, has significant ramifications on the distribution
of political power.7 By restricting the franchise, states
deny fundamental democratic rights and representation
that are otherwise guaranteed to all citizens.

Disenfranchisement should not be seen as a just punishment for any crime. In the United States, people in
prison continue to hold other fundamental constitutional rights — such as the right to get married or divorced, or to buy or sell property — and can exert their
political opinions through public writing, letters, and
phone calls.8 And any limitation on those core rights
are generally only justified due to security concerns.
Such security concerns are not implicated in the exercise of democratic rights.
Voting rights should not be suspended while someone
is being held accountable for a criminal offense, just
as voting rights are not suspended for people in our
country who violate our norms of conduct or engage
in other activity that society does not condone, such
as avowed racists, misogynists, or homophobes.9 We
may deeply disapprove of an individual’s actions or
beliefs but nonetheless we do not, in other circumstances, use a character test to determine who has the right
to vote in a democratic society.
In a democracy, everyone has the right to vote whether
or not we like them or their conduct. Once we decide
one group of citizens is unworthy of the vote — that
opens the door to the next group, and the next group
until democracy ceases to exist.

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EXPANDING VOTING RIGHTS SUPPORTS
PUBLIC SAFETY & CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
Disenfranchisement is also counterproductive to public
safety. Access to the vote promotes full citizenship and
decreases the marginalization of returning citizens.
Around 95% of incarcerated people will return home
someday and research suggests that people with strong
community connections, which can be promoted
through electoral participation, are less likely to reoffend.10
Disenfranchisement has no deterrent effect on crime.11
While the effectiveness of most sanctions is at least
partially measured by how well they discourage future
crimes from occurring, disenfranchisement has no such
effect. Many people are not even aware that they lose
the right to vote when they are sentenced, largely due
to the complexity of state disenfranchisement laws
and the failure of states to notify potential voters of
their eligibility. If the goal of criminal sanctions is to
ensure public safety, then disenfranchisement has
proven to be ineffective.
Reinstating access to the vote inside prisons would
also expand our ability to respond to very real issues
of abuse and unconstitutional treatment that continue
to take place in prisons and jails. Removing barriers to
suffrage can be seen as an investment in democracy
and public safety.

IMPLEMENTING VOTING IN PRISONS & JAILS
IS ALREADY HAPPENING
Universal suffrage reforms can look to existing models
in prisons and jails to ensure access to the vote behind
bars. In DC, recent legislation extending the right to
vote to all people in prison requires that the jurisdiction
provide voter registration forms, a voter guide, and
educational materials to all eligible voters in advance
of registration or absentee ballot submission deadlines.12 In Maine, officials visit the Maine State Prison
each year to update voter registrations and provide the
necessary forms to request an absentee ballot. Voters
are then mailed absentee ballots from town clerks
based on where they previously resided. Matthew
Dunlap, Maine’s former Secretary of State, has stressed
the role universal voting has in upholding the essential
rights of citizens and fostering connections outside of
prisons, explaining that voting, “is a process that should
belong to every American citizen. And in no small way
it helps keep [people in prison] connected to the real
world.”13

Similar efforts are underway in some local jails. In Illinois, recent legislation brought same-day registration
and polling machines to the Cook County Jail.24 Illinois’s
reform addresses the de facto disenfranchisement
even eligible voters face while incarcerated because
of obstacles to securing registration materials or absentee ballots. Eligible voters also generally lack internet access or another way to easily contact a state’s
board of elections to raise specific questions about the
voting process. Establishing polling places within
prisons and jails would ease these common barriers
to voting.

RESTORING THE VOTE TO ALL PEOPLE
IMPACTED BY THE CRIMINAL LEGAL SYSTEM
STRENGTHENS OUR DEMOCRACY
Over the last 25 years, half of states have passed
reforms to limit felony disenfranchisement in an effort
to address this byproduct of mass incarceration. These
reforms have resulted in almost 1 million people re-gaining the right to vote since 2016, but have frequently
excluded people in prison.15 Such reforms falsely
suggest that people in prison are qualitatively different
from those who face other sanctions. Sentences for
many crimes can vary from prison, jail, or community
supervision. The loss of voting rights reflects a difference in sentence, not necessarily in behavior. Judges
and juries are tasked with applying the criminal law;
they should not have the additional, unchecked power
to decide which citizens get to participate in our democracy and which get excluded.
Some may argue against expanding voting rights
because they fear that people in prison, who are overwhelmingly poor and people of color, may not vote for
their candidates. This is fundamentally an anti-democracy argument that seeks to deny votes rather than win
them. Such justifications for limiting democracy should
not stand in a society concerned with preserving and
protecting its democratic form of government - as
opposed to one that promotes tyranny, oligarchy, or
autocracy. It is also the case that the political views of
people in prison tend to mirror their non-incarcerated
peers, suggesting that expanding voting rights cannot
legitimately be opposed on partisan grounds.16
Just as the United States moved away from other barriers to voting, such as literacy tests and poll taxes, we
should eliminate the supposed character test that
denies the vote to incarcerated people by enacting
universal suffrage.

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ENDNOTES
1. Chris Uggen, Ryan Larson, Sarah Shannon, and
Arleth Pulido-Nava. 2020. “Locked Out 2020: Estimates of People Denied Voting Rights Due to a
Felony Conviction.” Washington: Sentencing Project.
2. Sauvé v. Canada, [2002] 3 S.C.R. 519, para. 44 (Can.);
Sauvé v. Canada, [1993] 2 S.C.R. 438 (Can.).
3. Constitutional Court of South Africa. 1999. Case
CCT 8/99.
4. Jeff Manza, Clem Brooks, and Christopher Uggen.
2003. “Civil Death” or Civil Rights? Public Attitudes
Towards Felon Disenfranchisement in the United
States.” 36(1), 193-216.
5. “Free the Vote.” 2020. The Sentencing Project.
6. Marc Mauer. 2011. “Voting Behind Bars: An Argument for Voting by Prisoners.” Howard Law Journal,
54(3), 561.
7. Prison Gerrymandering Project. 2020. Prison Policy
Initiative.
8. Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987)
9. Marc Mauer. (2019, May 6). Opinion: Prisoners
Should Be Allowed to Vote. Northwest Florida Daily
News.
10. Christopher Uggen and Jeff Manza. 2004. “Voting
and Subsequent Crime and Arrest: Evidence from
a Community Sample.” Columbia Human Rights Law
Review, 36(1), 193-216.

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11. Christopher Poulos. 2019. The Fight Against Felony
Disenfranchisement. Harvard Law and Policy Review
Blog.
12. The District of Columbia. Restore the Vote Amendment. 2020.
13. Daniel Nichanian. (2019, May 2). “A Sliver of Light”:
Maine’s Top Election Official on Voting From Prison.
The Appeal.
14. Sam Kuhn, Hannah Gross, Alex Fay, Kate Levien,
Giovanna Robledo, Amy Eppler-Epstein, and Van
Augur. 2020. “Improving Access to Voting in Connecticut Prison and Jails.” Connecticut: Connecticut
Sentencing Commission.
15. Chris Uggen, et al. 2020.
16. Van R. Newkirk III. (2016, March 9). Polls for Prisons:
Incarcerated People Voted in Primaries in Vermont,
Puerto Rico, and Maine. Why Can’t They Vote Anywhere Else? The Atlantic; Nicole Lewis, Aviva Shen
and Anna Flagg. (2020, March 13). What Do We
Really Know About the Politics of People Behind
Bars? The Marshall Project.

This briefing paper was written by Kevin Muhitch, Research Fellow,
and Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Senior Research Analyst, at The
Sentencing Project. Published March 2021.

RESEARCH AND ADVOCACY FOR REFORM

1705 DeSales Street NW, 8th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20036
sentencingproject.org

The Sentencing Project works for a fair and effective U.S. justice
system by promoting reforms in sentencing policy, addressing
unjust racial disparities and practices, and advocating for
alternatives to incarceration.

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