48 states ban people with felony convictions from voting.
Laws and policies across the United States have disenfranchised an estimated 4.6 million people as of 2022 due to felony convictions. This report chronicles felony disenfranchisement over the past 20 years. States have enacted policies and laws to curtail disenfranchisement and decrease prison populations, but obstacles remain. This report shares the distribution of felony disenfranchisement at the national and state levels, with race, ethnicity, and sex variations. In addition, barriers such as outstanding monetary sanctions make hundreds of thousands of people ineligible for re-enfranchisement. Although legal changes have decreased disenfranchisement, millions continue to be disenfranchised.
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Key Findings:
- Since 2016, felony disenfranchisement has been reduced by 24 percent.
- 75 percent of people disenfranchised have fully completed their sentences or remain under supervision.
- Women make up over 20 percent of the total disenfranchised population.
- One in thirteen adults in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee is disenfranchised.
- Of the 1.1 million people banned from voting in Florida, 934,500 are prohibited because they cannot afford to pay court-ordered monetary sanctions.
- Georgia cancels outstanding debt upon completion of probation.
- Four states condition eligibility for re-enfranchisement on payment of some or all legal financial obligations.
- 5.3 percent of African Americans are disenfranchised compared to 1.5 percent of the non-African American Population.
- From a conservative estimate of Latinx Americans, 1.7 percent are disenfranchised.