Felon Voting Laws Disenfranchise 5.85 Million Americans With Criminal Records:The Sentencing Project [View all]

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Felon Voting Laws Disenfranchise 5.85 Million Americans With Criminal Records: The Sentencing Project

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/12/felon-voting-laws-disenfranchise-sentencing-project_n_1665860.html

A record number of Americans with criminal records cannot vote in what is expected to be a tight presidential election, a new study says.

More than 5.85 million adults who've been convicted of a felony aren't welcome at polling places, according to data through 2010 compiled by The Sentencing Project. That's 600,000 more than in 2004, the last time the nonprofit group crunched the numbers.

The vast majority of these disenfranchised adults have been released from prison. Sentencing Project researchers found more than 4 million Americans who cannot cast a ballot because they're on probation or parole, or live in a state that withholds the right to vote from all ex-felons.

"This is a fundamental question of democracy," said the Sentencing Project's executive director Marc Mauer. "These policies go back to the founding of this country. [The U.S.] was founded as a great experiment in democracy, but was very limited. Wealthy, white male landowners granted themselves the right to vote, but women, poor people, African Americans and people with felony convictions could not vote.