Felony disenfranchisement must end, once and for all

By Anjali Enjeti

In January, a federal court struck down a provision in Virginia’s constitution that stripped voting rights from people with past criminal records and granted the governor sole discretion to restore them. Prior to the court’s ruling, former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s permanent ban on convicted felons from voting had been one of the harshest and most punitive in the US, preventing an estimated 260,000 Virginia voters from voting in 2024. 

Affecting 4 million voters, or 1.7 percent of the total eligible voting population, felony disenfranchisement is one of the most widespread forms of voter suppression. It exists, to some degree, in 48 states. The parameters of this policy vary from state to state, but essentially, it deprives eligible voters with felony convictions of their right to vote. States like Michigan, Colorado and California automatically restore the right when voters are released from prison. Texas, Georgia and Wisconsin are among the states that renew suffrage after the completion of parole and probation. Only the District of Columbia, Maine and Vermont honor the rights of voters convicted of felonies. 

Like all types of voter suppression, the goal of felony disenfranchisement is to deny the vote to Democratic-leaning racial minorities. Black people are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of serious crimes than white people, which means that even Black voters who are not guilty of alleged crimes are stripped of their right to vote. Fortunately, some legislators have seen the light in recent years. Since 2018, several states have begun restoring the rights of voters convicted of all or some felonies upon the completion of their sentences. 

Despite the possible consequences on election outcomes, felony disenfranchisement fails to receive the degree of attention and condemnation it warrants. This is rooted in the persistent belief that people who don’t obey the law shouldn’t have the privilege of shaping the future of their government. The irony is that eligible voters with felony convictions have likely been failed by their local, state and federal elected officials, and as a result, possess a more comprehensive understanding of the issues and how governments can and should be improved. 

Felony disenfranchisement’s sinister sibling is known as prison gerrymandering. It is a devious subcategory of gerrymandering, which can involve drawing district maps based on race and/or drawing district maps to dilute the voting power of Black and other minority voters by packing them into majority-white districts. Prison gerrymandering operates in a similar vein by skewing the representation of incarcerated racial minorities. 

Despite the possible consequences on election outcomes, felony disenfranchisement fails to receive the degree of attention and condemnation it warrants.

Some two million people are incarcerated in prisons, jails, juvenile detention centers and immigration detention centers, and an outsized proportion of them are racial minorities. Black people make up 13 percent of the US population, but 37 percent of the prison population. Black, Native and Hispanic people are incarcerated at approximately five, four and three times the rate of white inmates. 

Over the last few decades, prisons, which have historically been constructed in urban centers, have moved to predominantly white rural areas of the US. This ruralization of prison populations means that imprisoned disenfranchised voters are drawn into the same districts as rural, Republican-leaning, white voters. Thus, the voices of rural white voters in districts with imprisoned neighbors carry disproportionate weight in election outcomes, while the voices of incarcerated people go unheard in their home districts. Nineteen states have either ended or limited prison gerrymandering. The practice can be eliminated entirely, fairly easily, if the US census decides to count imprisoned people in the districts they resided in prior to incarceration.   

The rate of wrongfully convicted racial minorities should be reason enough to abolish prison gerrymandering and felony disenfranchisement. But all eligible voters with felony convictions deserve full, unencumbered voting rights. Virginia, thankfully, is moving in the right direction. Legislators have recently introduced a constitutional amendment to automatically enfranchise voters when they complete their felony sentences. Voters will get the final say on the proposed amendment in the election later this year. 

Anjali Enjeti is a journalist, activist, poll worker, and former attorney based near Atlanta. She is the author of “Ballot,” “Southbound: Essays on Identity,” “Inheritance,” and “Social Change.”