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Do Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?
Marc Meredith and Michael Morse
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 2014 651: 220
DOI: 10.1177/0002716213502931
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502931ANN
research-article2014

The Annals of the American AcademyDo Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?

Do Voting
Rights
Notification
Laws Increase
Ex-Felon
Turnout?

By
Marc Meredith
and
Michael Morse

Previous research documents widespread confusion
about who can and cannot vote among people who have
come into contact with the criminal justice system. This
research, and considerable activism drawing attention
to the issue, has spurred a number of state legislatures
to pass laws requiring the states to notify ex-felons
about their voting rights. The purpose of this article is
to better understand the policy processes that produce
these notification laws and to assess whether the laws
affect ex-felons’ registration and turnout rates. Data on
discharges from the correctional system and voter files
are merged from three states that have recently passed
notification laws: New Mexico, New York, and North
Carolina. Our findings show little evidence of an
increase in ex-felon registration or turnout after notification laws are implemented.
Keywords: felon disenfranchisement; voting rights;
notification

C

riminal disenfranchisement is increasingly
a contested criminal justice and electoral
administration issue as wide swaths of the
electorate are denied the right to vote. States
have substantial autonomy to restrict the voting rights of those with criminal convictions,
and they have enacted policies that range
from no voting restrictions at all to lifetime
disenfranchisement. An estimated 5.8 million
citizens—or 2.5 percent of the voting age population—nearly half of whom had already completed the terms of their sentence, were legally
disenfranchised in 2010 (Uggen, Shannon, and
Manza 2012).
Estimates of the legal disenfranchisement
rate may understate the effects of criminal
disenfranchisement if disenfranchisement
laws cause citizens with voting rights to not
vote. One form of such de facto disenfranchisement occurs when nondisenfranchised
individuals believe that they are ineligible to
vote (Wood and Bloom 2008). An ex-felon
may find it challenging to learn whether he or
DOI: 10.1177/0002716213502931

220

ANNALS, AAPSS, 651, January 2014
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Do Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?

221

she is eligible to vote because both the fragmented nature of criminal disenfranchisement policy and the complexity of specific states’ disenfranchisement
laws. How and when voting rights are restored can vary across neighboring
states and depend on relatively nuanced details about the specific crime of
conviction or date of discharge. Thus, it is not surprising that individuals who
come into contact with the criminal justice system are frequently misinformed
about their voting rights (Drucker and Barreras 2005). Some of this misinformation likely results from correctional officers and election officials also holding incorrect or inconsistent beliefs about the criminal disenfranchisement
policy in their state (Ewald 2005; Allen 2011).
A number of state legislatures recently considered policies designed to combat
this misinformation. According to data collected by the Brennan Center for
Justice, almost half of all states have a statute that requires the state to inform the
criminally disenfranchised about either the loss or the reinstatement of their voting rights.1 Notification procedures vary across states, with differences in who
communicates the information (e.g., a judge, a correctional officer), when the
information is communicated (e.g., upon sentencing, at discharge), and how the
information is communicated (e.g., verbally or in written form, in person or in a
mailing).
This article investigates whether these notification requirements increase
voter registration and turnout among those discharged from a felony sentence. A number of the states with notification requirements, including New
Mexico, New York, and North Carolina, passed these requirements in the last
10 years. By merging criminal justice discharge records with statewide voter
records, we estimate registration and turnout rates for those individuals completing their sentence before and after these states implemented notification.
If these notification laws correct misperceptions about voting eligibility
among individuals who would otherwise vote, the registration and turnout
rates of the cohorts discharged just after notification begins should be higher
than the registration and turnout rates of the cohorts discharged just before
notification begins.

Marc Meredith is an assistant professor in the Political Science Department at the University
of Pennsylvania. His research examines the political economy of American elections, with a
particular focus on the application of causal inference methods. His research has been published in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, the Proceedings of the
National Academies of Science, Political Analysis, and the Quarterly Journal of Political
Science, among other outlets.
Michael Morse is a research fellow at Stanford Law School. His undergraduate honors thesis,
titled “Discretionary Disenfranchisement,” received the Frederick W. Meier Jr. Prize for best
undergraduate senior thesis by the Delta chapter of Phi Beta Kappa.
NOTE: We thank Maria Silfa for her excellent research assistance and Alec Ewald and Lisa
Miller for helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank Lonna Atkeson and Lisa Bryant
for providing us with a New Mexico voter file and David Nickerson for providing us with a
North Carolina voter file.

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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

However, we find little evidence that notification increases registration and
turnout rates in New Mexico, New York, and North Carolina. The presidential
election turnout rate among recent ex-felons is about 10 percent both before and
after notification in all three states. While we cannot rule out that notification
slightly increased registration and turnout, we can rule out the large mobilizing
effects of notification that Meredith and Morse (2013) find in a similar population in Iowa. We conclude by discussing a number of potential explanations for
why notification appears to have increased registration and turnout in Iowa but
not in these other states.

Relevant Literature
A growing body of research examines the political consequences of criminal
disenfranchisement. The disenfranchised population is disproportionately
young, male, African American, and less educated than the general population
of voters (Western, Pattillo, and Weiman 2004). African Americans, for example,
are about three times more likely to be disenfranchised because of a criminal
conviction (Uggen, Shannon, and Manza 2012). This distinct profile suggests
that the political preferences of disenfranchised citizens differ from those of the
general voting population. Seminal works by Uggen and Manza (2002) and
Manza and Uggen (2004, 2006) find that Republican candidates benefit from
criminal disenfranchisement. Uggen and Manza reach this conclusion by using
data on nonfelons to fit turnout and vote choice models, and then extrapolating
the probability that disenfranchised voters would support Democratic candidates if they were eligible to vote. Their models predict that about 35 percent
of the disenfranchised population would turn out in a presidential election, with
about 73 percent of those who vote supporting the Democratic presidential
candidate.
Subsequent work questions whether these models overstate the turnout propensities and Democratic preferences of the disenfranchised population. Uggen
and Manza’s (2002) approach assumes that the demographic characteristics
included in their models—gender, race, age, income, labor force status, marital
status, and education—capture all the differences between the voting tendencies
of felons and nonfelons. But if the unobserved variables that increase political
participation also negatively associate with the propensity to commit crimes,
these models overstate the probability that the criminally disenfranchised would
otherwise vote. Belief in prosocial norms, for example, causes people to both
obey the law and participate in politics (Manza and Uggen 2006). Consistent with
this intuition, Hjalmarsson and Lopez (2010) find that observable variables only
explain about half of the difference in the turnout rates of those who have been
incarcerated and those who have never had contact with the criminal justice system. Studies that use public records to estimate the turnout rates of the nondisenfranchised ex-felon population also usually find smaller turnout rates than
predicted by Uggen and Manza’s models (Burch 2007, 2011, 2012; Haselswerdt
2009; Meredith and Morse 2013).
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Do Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?

223

Misinformation may be one reason why actual turnout is less than what
Uggen and Manza (2002) predict. Previous research shows that many individuals who have contact with the criminal justice system hold incorrect beliefs
about their right to vote. Drucker and Barreras (2005) survey 334 individuals
under various forms of supervision in Connecticut, New York, and Ohio about
their voting rights and find that nearly half of the population answered incorrectly or responded that they did not know when asked whether a felony conviction is permanently disenfranchising. Likewise, few of the incarcerated
felons in Minnesota interviewed by Manza and Uggen (2006) understood their
future voting rights. Thus, there may be a sizable number of voting-eligible exfelons who would vote if they did not believe (incorrectly) that they are ineligible to do so.
These informational barriers to turnout are likely compounded by the fact that
criminal justice officials and election administrators are also frequently misinformed about criminal disenfranchisement policy. Ewald (2005) finds that 37
percent of election administrators either misreport or report being unaware of a
key aspect of their state’s criminal disenfranchisement policy. These misinformed
elites likely contribute to the misinformation within the population who comes
into contact with the criminal justice system. Misinformed elites may also impose
additional barriers to political participation for voting-eligible ex-felons. For example, Allen (2011) reports that nearly half of the election boards in New York asked
ex-felons who attempted to register to vote to provide documentation that is not
required by state law.
Many states recently have considered legislative reforms to reduce misinformation about criminal disenfranchisement. Voting rights lobbies such as the
Brennan Center and the Sentencing Project have made the passage of voting
rights notification bills one of their top priorities. Yet little is known about
whether these reforms increase political participation. The only study that we are
aware of examines a quasi-experiment in Iowa in which only ex-felons discharged
after a certain date were mailed a letter that notified them about the restoration
of their voting rights (Meredith and Morse 2013). Meredith and Morse (2013)
estimate that being mailed this letter increased ex-felon turnout by nearly 10
percentage points. However, there are a number of reasons why the effect estimated in Iowa may not generalize to other states. Although the governor’s office
sent these mailings in Iowa, most states delegate responsibility for administering
notification to the criminal justice system. This may affect the probability that
individuals receive the notification treatment, the informational content of the
treatment itself, and the response to such information. Also, recipients in Iowa
were informed of a recent expansion in voting rights, while most notification
programs inform recipients about a long-standing policy.

Recent Voting Rights Notification Bills
Criminal disenfranchisement policy has been particularly dynamic over the past
15 years, with nearly half of states making at least one policy change (Porter
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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

Table 1
Recently Introduced Legislation on Voting Rights Notification
House

State

Year

LA

2008

MN

2009

MS

2006

NM

2005

NY

2010

NC

2005

NC

2007

TX

2007

Chief Bill
Author(s)
(Race, Party)

(D)

Senate

Yes Votes-No Votes (Members)
(I)
(R)
(D)
(R)

Rep. LaFonta
47-1
2-0
26-19
(Black, D)
(52)
(2)
(50)
Sen. Moua
86-1
39-8
(Asian, D)
(87)
(0)
(47)
Rep. Champion
(Black, D)
Sen. Thomas
No Vote
(Black, D)
(74)
(0)
(47)
Rep. Bailey
(Black, D)
Rep. Chasey
40-0
20-7
(White, D)
(42)
(0)
(28)
Omnibus Bill
Sen. Montgomery
(Black, D)
(107)
(0)
(47)
Rep. Wright
(Black, D)
Rep. Pierce
No Vote
(Black, D)
(63)
(0)
(57)
Rep. Pierce
65-0
34-12
(Black, D)
(68)
(52)
Rep. Dutton
67-0
53-21
(Black, D)
(70)
(0)
(80)

22-0
(23)
45-0
(46)

Governor
Action
(Party)

15-0
(15)
2-18
(21)

Signed
(R)
Vetoed
(R)

No Vote
(27)
(25)

No Bill
(R)

21-0
7-10
(24)
(18)
Omnibus Bill
(32)
(30)

Signed
(D)
Signed
(D)

No Vote
(29)
(21)
Omnibus Bill
(31)
(19)
11-0
15-5
(11)
(20)

No Bill
(R)
Signed
(D)
Vetoed
(R)

2010). One reform that a number of states have considered is a requirement that
the state notify ex-felons when their voting rights are restored. Table 1 summarizes all such notification bills (to our knowledge) that were introduced in state
legislatures between 2003 and 2012.2
Because African Americans are disproportionately affected by criminal disenfranchisement, our expectation is that African American legislators will act as
policy entrepreneurs on this issue (McMiller 2008; Ewald 2009). Consistent with
this expectation, Table 1 indicates that at least one of the primary authors of these
notification bills was an African American in six of the seven cases. This pattern
is consistent with Haynie’s (2001) argument that descriptive representation is
necessary for African Americans to be substantively represented in state
legislatures.

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Do Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?

225

Another expectation is that Democratic legislators will be more supportive of
notification laws. The Democratic and Republican parties’ positions on how election administration should handle tradeoffs between access and integrity in
political participation became increasingly differentiated in the early 2000s
(Hasen 2012). Moreover, previous research shows that Democrats would benefit
from additional ex-felon participation. Consistent with this idea, Table 1 shows
that Democratic legislators almost always support notification, while Republican
legislators’ support is more mixed. However, some other patterns in Table 1
reveal that partisanship is not the only factor determining whether notification
reform is enacted. Notification bills died in committee in both North Carolina in
2005 and Mississippi in 2006 despite Democrats having unified control of both
state legislatures. Moreover, notification language was added to an omnibus bill
in both North Carolina in 2007 and New York in 2010 after attempts to pass a
standalone notification bill in unified Democratic state legislatures stalled.
Conversely, a notification law passed both the Texas House and Senate despite
unified Republican control.
Partisanship does a better job predicting gubernatorial behavior. While
Democratic governors signed all three notification bills that they received,
Republican governors vetoed two of the three that they received. In a statement accompanying his veto of Minnesota’s 2009 notification bill, Tim Pawlenty
wrote that the bill was redundant and, further, that ex-felons needed to take
personal responsibility for learning their own rights. In 2007, Texas Governor
Rick Perry vetoed a notification bill and made a similar reference to personal
responsibility, arguing that it was unfair to provide information about voting
rights to ex-felons when the same service was not also provided to law-abiding
citizens. Given that both Pawlenty and Perry ran for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, these vetoes may have been motivated by beliefs about the
Republican presidential primary electorates’ preferences regarding ex-felon
voting rights.3
The remainder of this article evaluates whether the notification laws passed by
New Mexico, New York, and North Carolina affect the rates at which ex-felons
register and vote.4 Since 2001, voting rights in New Mexico have been restored
automatically upon discharge from prison, probation, and parole. An ex-felon
who wants to register to vote needs to present a discharge certificate to his or her
county election clerk. This certificate, which is presented in Figure A1 in the
appendix, informs both the ex-felon and the county election clerk that the exfelon’s voting rights have been restored. Prior to the 2005 notification law, exfelons needed to request that the Department of Corrections provide them with
this certificate. Starting on July 1, 2005, all ex-felons began automatically receiving this certificate upon discharge.
Notification in New York and North Carolina takes a slightly different form
than in New Mexico. Both states include a voter registration form and relevant
literature in the packets given to individuals upon discharge. Figure A2 and
Figure A3 in the appendix show the voting literature that New York began

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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

including in discharge packets on October 4, 2010. It is noteworthy that neither
form explicitly states that the individual’s voting rights have been restored and
that the only reference to criminal disenfranchisement in this literature is a single
line on the voter registration form that reads “to register you must . . . not be in
prison or parole for a felony conviction.”
North Carolina instituted a similar notification program in two separate waves.
The North Carolina Department of Public Safety distributed a memo on
February 6, 2007, ordering that a brochure produced by the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) be included in discharge packets. Over the summer, the
state legislature passed and the governor signed a notification law. Starting on
October 1, 2007, dischargees received both the brochure displayed in Figures A4
and A5 in the appendix and a registration form in their discharge packets. The
brochure distributed after October 1, 2007, is quite similar to the brochure that
the ACLU produced. Unlike the literature provided by New York, this brochure
explicitly states that voting rights are restored upon discharge, although this
information is not centrally located in the brochure.

Constructing Turnout Rates from Public Records
The two most common ways to measure registration and turnout in the political
science literature are either via actual registration and turnout data aggregated by
precinct, county, or state, or self-reported registration and turnout data in individual-level survey data. Unfortunately, neither of these approaches is useful for
studying the registration and turnout behavior of ex-felons. Because ex-felons
make up a small proportion of the electorate, it is difficult to detect the effects of
felon disenfranchisement laws in aggregated turnout data (Miles 2004). Moreover,
there is no survey of sufficient size that asks about both criminal history and voter
turnout (Burch 2011).
Because these traditional ways of measuring registration and turnout are
insufficient, we follow the example of recent research, combining information
in criminal justice discharge records and state voter files to create our own
measures (Burch 2007, 2011, 2012; Haselswerdt 2009; Meredith and Morse
2013). Voter files are databases that contain the name, address, demographic
information, and turnout history of all registered voters in a state. These files
are public record, although the cost of obtaining the data and the specific
demographic information available in the file vary across states (Cooper,
Haspel, and Knotts 2009). We search for whether there are records in the state
voter file that match the information provided for each record in the discharge
data. We then estimate registration and turnout rates by calculating statistics
such as the percentage of criminal justice records that match at least one voter
file record and the percentage that match at least one record of voting in a
given election.

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Do Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?

227

Implementing this matching process requires that we define a criterion for
what constitutes a match between a record in the corrections data and a record
in the voter file.5 Perhaps obviously, we can match only on information that is
contained in both the corrections data and voter file. Because there is substantial
variation in what information is contained in a state’s corrections data and voter
file, it is difficult to construct a common match criterion that can be used across
states. In the next section, we detail the various criteria used in each state.
Multiple forms of measurement error could cause the percentage of discharge
records that match a voter file record to differ from the actual registration rate.
One form of measurement error occurs when a corrections record matches
another individual’s voter file record. Such measurement error is likely to be
more prevalent when individuals have a common name and when there are fewer
other common variables between the corrections and voter file data. A second
form of measurement error occurs when a corrections record fails to match the
individual’s corresponding voter file record. Such measurement is more likely to
occur when names are presented differently in the two sources or when the files
contain typographical errors. Finally, some ex-felons will have passed away or
have moved to other states. Because these different forms of measurement error
operate in different directions, it is unclear whether the number of matched
discharge records will underestimate or overestimate the actual registration rate.
Following Meredith and Morse (2013), we use placebo matching to assess the
number of discharge records that match another individual’s voter file record. We
permute the felon discharge records so that the date of birth or age is slightly
modified. The number of voter file records that match these fake discharge
records provides an estimate of the number of erroneous matches in our actual
data.
Assessing the number of missed true matches is more difficult. To reduce the
number of missed matches, we convert variants of a common name back to a root
name (e.g., “Mike” and “Mikey” are converted back to “Michael”). When computational power permits, we also expand our matching criterion to include near
matches. For example, records are matched if they are the same except that the
first names differ by a single character (e.g., “Michele” and “Michelle”) or the last
name in one source is a subset of the last name in the other (e.g., “Clinton” and
“Rodham Clinton”). However, there are no modifications that can be made to
prevent certain errors. For example, Meredith and Morse (2013) show patterns
consistent with more female matches being missed because females are more
likely to change their last name.
Measurement error complicates any attempt to use matched corrections and
voter file data to make comparisons of ex-felons’ political participation across
states, particularly because typographical errors, one of the primary causes of
missing matches, likely vary based on the quality of record keeping in the state.
These data are better suited for making the types of intrastate comparisons of
political participation that we make in this article. Our primary analysis consists
of comparisons of registration and turnout rates for cohorts of individuals discharged before and after the implementation of notification laws. Many of the
sources of measurement error in our estimated registration and turnout rates are
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THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

likely to be constant within a state across time. Those factors that vary across
time, such as moving out of state or death, are likely to have similar effects on the
cohorts discharged just prior to and after these laws are implemented. Thus,
looking at how registration and turnout rates vary among those discharged in
close proximity to the implementation of these laws can help us to learn about
whether these notification policies cause a change in registration and turnout
behavior.

Data
We were able to collect discharge records and voter file data from New Mexico,
New York, and North Carolina. This section presents the information that is
available in the discharge records and voter files in each state. We then detail the
procedure used in each state to match these records. Finally, descriptive statistics
are presented to illustrate the results of these matches.

New York
The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision
provided us with ex-felons’ full name, date of birth, current parole status, and
parole status date. In New York, individuals convicted of a felony regain their
right to vote when they have completed both prison and parole supervision.
Thus, our analysis focuses on those individuals whose parole status is listed as
“discharged,” with the parole status date indicating the day on which these individuals regained their voting rights. As only an individual’s most recent change in
supervision status is observed in these data, the registration and turnout rates
estimated for New York should be interpreted as registration and turnout rates
for individuals who are discharged from parole and do not subsequently end up
back under supervision in New York.6
Our copy of the New York voter file contains the full name, date of birth, registration date, party affiliation, and voting history of all individuals registered to
vote in New York as of April 2013. Registration date refers to the date that registration was last modified. This differs from the date that registration was initiated
in cases where a registrant updated his or her address or party affiliation subsequent to initial registration.
Parole discharge records are matched to the voter file using a process nearly
identical to that described in Meredith and Morse (2013). First, discharge
records are merged to every record in the voter file that reports the same birthdate. Then, the first and last names in the two sources are compared, and those
merges with sufficiently similar first and last name are kept. Finally, the middle
names in the two sources are compared, and the remaining merges with consistent middle names are kept. Because the middle name is often not reported in
one or both sources, middle names are considered to be consistent if either
source is missing a middle name.

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Do Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?

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Table 2 presents descriptive statistics of the matches obtained using this
matching procedure. The first column of the first row shows that 32.4 percent of
the 48,628 discharge records from between November 5, 2008, and September
30, 2012, match a record in the New York voter file. However, a large number of
these registration records are inactive, as only 19.3 percent match to an active
registration record. If these registrations are the result of notification, we might
expect that the registration would occur in close proximity to when the notification takes place. But we observe that only 1.1 percent of discharge records match
to a registration record with a registration date within 90 days of the discharge
date.
Those ex-felons who are registered overwhelmingly register as Democrats. Of
those discharge records that match to at least one voter file record, 61.5 percent
match only to Democratic voter records. In contrast, 25.5 percent match only to
voter records with no affiliation or an affiliation with a minor party, while 9 percent match only to Republican voter records. The remaining 4 percent of
matched discharged records are cases where the discharge record matches with
multiple voter file records that have inconsistent party identification. This could
happen because someone changed their partisan identification across time or
because a discharge record matches the voter record of two different
individuals.7
The final three columns of Table 2 show that recently discharged ex-felons in
New York vote at extremely low rates. While low turnout in 2008 and 2010 can
partially be explained by some of the population being disenfranchised, only 8.3
percent voted once eligible in the 2012 presidential election. As a point of comparison, just over 15 percent of males between the ages of 18 and 44 without a
high school degree reported voting in the November 2012 Current Population
Survey. The bottom two rows of Table 2 show that the cohort that was discharged
before New York began distributing informational pamphlets and voter registration forms turned out at a slightly higher rate in 2012 than the cohort discharged
afterward.
One concern discussed above is that a discharge record may be matching
another individual’s voter registration record. To assess the prevalence of this
type of matching, we create a dataset of placebo discharge records that are
nearly identical to the actual discharge records and match these placebo records
to the voter file. These fake discharge records are constructed by permuting the
birthdates in the discharge records by 35 days. Rows two and three of Table 2
show that only a small number of fake discharge records match a voter file
record, suggesting that we are unlikely to have many false matches in our actual
data.

New Mexico
The New Mexico Corrections Department provided us with information on
the full name, date of birth, and discharge date for former inmates. Discharge in
New Mexico refers to the completion of all prison, parole, and probation supervision, which is when individuals convicted of a felony regain the right to vote. Only
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All Discharges 11/5/08–9/30/12
(N = 48,628)
Actual birthdate
Actual birthdate – 35
Actual birthdate + 35
Discharged 11/5/08–10/3/10
(N = 24,381)
Actual birthdate
Discharged 10/4/10–9/30/12
(N = 24,247)
Actual birthdate
1.1
0.0
0.0

0.9

1.4

32.1

32.7

18.0

20.6

19.3
0.3
0.3

4,433

5,085

9,518
142
155

60.6

62.3

61.5
54.0
52.3

9.4

8.7

9.0
15.3
19.5

Rep.

25.6

25.3

25.5
28.2
26.2

4.3

3.8

4.0
2.5
2.1

Other Unknown

% of Registered Affiliated as:

Total Active
Within 90 Days
of Discharge Active Matches
Dem.

32.4
0.4
0.4

All

% Registered

Table 2
New York Discharge Records Matched to 2013 Voter File

3.8

3.2

3.5
0.2
0.2

2008

1.0

2.2

1.6
0.1
0.1

2010

% Voted in:

7.8

8.7

8.3
0.1
0.2

2012

Do Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?

231

an individual’s most recent discharge date is observable in these data. Thus, the
registration and turnout rates estimated for New Mexico by discharge date
should be interpreted as registration and turnout rates for individuals discharged
on a given day who do not subsequently end up back in supervision.
Our copy of the New Mexico voter file contains the full name, year of birth,
registration date, party affiliation, and voting history of all individuals registered
to vote in New Mexico in February 2009. Registration date refers to the date that
registration was last modified rather than the date that registration originated.
Matching the New Mexico discharge records to the voter file is made more
complicated because we observe year of birth, rather than date of birth, in the
New Mexico voter file. As a result, we cannot use date of birth as the initial variable on which we screen potential matches. Moreover, initially screening only on
year of birth results in too many potential matches to feasibly search given computational constraints. Instead, we exactly match on year of birth, root first name,
and root last name, and keep those matches with a consistent middle name in
both sources.8
Table 3 shows that the characteristics of the matches in New Mexico are
broadly similar to the matches in New York. A slightly higher percentage of New
Mexico discharge records match to an active record in the New Mexico voter file
than in New York. Once again, registered ex-felons in New Mexico tend to be
overwhelmingly Democrat: 51.9 percent match to only registered Democrats,
18.9 percent match to only registered Republicans, 21.7 percent match to only
individuals registered neither as Democrats nor Republicans, and 7.5 percent
match to multiple individuals who affiliate with different parties.9 Only 12.9 percent of discharge records match to a voter file record that shows turnout in the
2008 presidential election, and this rate is nearly identical among the cohorts
discharged before and after the state began automatically issuing discharge
certificates.
One difference between New Mexico and New York highlighted by Table 3
is the number of matches that we find between our placebo discharge records
and the voter file. When the age in the discharge data is permuted to be two
years below and above the actual age, we find that 6.2 percent and 6.5 percent
of discharge records match an active registration in the voter file, respectively.
Because year of birth is less discriminating than date of birth, this increase in
placebo matches is expected. The number of placebo matches indicates that
even though the number of matches is somewhat higher in New Mexico, the
active registration and turnout rates are likely quite similar in New York and
New Mexico.

North Carolina
The North Carolina Department of Public Safety provided us with information on the full name, age at discharge, and discharge date for all inmates discharged from the correctional system. Just as in New Mexico, discharge in North
Carolina refers to the completion off all prison, parole, and probation supervision, which is when an individual convicted of a felony regains the right to vote.
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232

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All Discharges 11/3/04–9/30/08
(N = 26,194)
Actual age
Actual age – 2
Actual age + 2
Discharged 11/3/04–6/30/05
(N = 3,872)
Actual age
Discharged 7/1/05–9/30/08
(N = 22,322)
Actual age
0.9
0.1
0.2

0.4

1.0

23.7

25.9

24.1

22.3

23.8
6.2
6.5

6,368

1,040

7,408
2,460
2,634

51.9

51.4

51.9
47.5
50.9

18.7

20.6

19.0
17.2
16.8

22.0

19.9

21.7
16.1
12.7

Rep. Other

7.3

8.2

7.5
19.2
19.7

Unknown

% of Registered Affiliated as:

Within 90 Days
Total Active
of Discharge Active Matches Dem.

25.6
6.6
6.9

All

% Registered

Table 3
New Mexico Discharge Records Matched to 2009 Voter File

9.6

8.5

9.5
3.9
4.2

2004

5.6

6.3

5.7
2.7
3.2

2006

12.9

12.8

12.9
4.3
4.7

2008

% Voted in:

Do Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?

233

We observe multiple discharge dates if an individual has been discharged from
the system multiple times. Thus, unlike in New York and New Mexico, the registration and turnout rates estimated for North Carolina by discharge date should
be interpreted as registration and turnout rates unconditional of future supervision status.10
Our copy of the North Carolina state voter file contains the full name, age,
registration date, party affiliation, and voting history of all individuals registered
to vote in North Carolina as of March 2013.11 Registration date refers to the date
that registration was last updated rather than the date that registration
originated.
Matching the discharge records to the voter file is even more complicated in
North Carolina than in New Mexico because both sources provide age rather
than year of birth or date of birth. As a result, most discharge records could be
listed under two potential ages in the voter file.12 Thus, we run the same matching procedure that we used on the New Mexico data but search for records in the
voter file that match either of these two potential ages.13 Because we cannot use
age to reduce the number of potential matches in the voter file as effectively in
North Carolina as in New Mexico, we expect to observe more false positive
matches in our placebo data.
Table 4 shows that more discharge records match a voter file record in North
Carolina than in New Mexico or New York, with 33.2 percent and 21.0 percent
of discharge records matching an active voter registration and 2008 turnout
record, respectively. As expected, there are also more placebo observations that
match a voter file record in North Carolina than in New Mexico. After accounting for these placebo matches, the 2008 turnout rate appears to be just above 10
percent, which is a couple percentage points higher than what we observed in
New Mexico in 2008 and New York in 2012.14 Once again ex-felons are more
Democratic than the general population of active registrants.15

Descriptive statistics
Table A1 in the appendix shows the observable characteristics in each state’s
discharge data that we relate in the next section to the registration and turnout
behavior of ex-felons. We observe an individual’s age, gender, and time since
discharge in all three states. The discharged population is both younger and
more male than the general population. We also observe an individual’s race in
New York and North Carolina. In New York, we observe four categories of
race—white, black, Hispanic, and all others—while in North Carolina we only
observe three categories—white, black, and all others. About half of the discharged population is black in both New York and North Carolina, with
Hispanics making up an additional quarter of the discharged population in New
York. Finally, we observe whether an individual was discharged from prison, or
from parole or probation and the amount of total time he or she served in
North Carolina.

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234

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All Discharges 11/3/04–9/30/08
(N = 83,899)
Actual age
Actual age – 2
Actual age + 2
Discharged 1/1/05–2/6/07
(N = 46,918)
Actual age
Discharged 2/7/07–9/30/07
(N = 14,414)
Actual age
Discharged 10/1/07–9/30/08
(N = 22,567)
Actual age

% of Registered Affiliated as:

3.2
0.6
0.6

1.2

1.9

8.1

40.4

42.0

42.8

33.3

33.3

33.1

33.2
11.9
12.5

13,291

8,619

27,899

49,809
28,691
30,388

55.3

54.1

54.4

54.6
33.8
35.2

10.3

10.8

10.0

10.2
14.5
14.5

18.2

17.6

17.7

17.9
15.1
13.8

16.3

17.4

17.8

17.3
36.5
36.5

Within 90 Days
Total Active
of Discharge Active Matches Dem. Rep. Other Unknown

41.3
13.4
14.0

All

% Registered

Table 4
North Carolina Discharge Records Matched to 2013 Voter File

11.8

11.5

10.1

10.8
7.2
8.5

2004

21.7

21.1

20.6

21.0
9.4
10.4

2008

9.6

9.9

10.2

10.0
6.0
6.9

2010

% Voted in

22.4

23.0

22.8

22.7
9.8
10.5

2012

Do Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?

235

Results
Our empirical approach compares the registration and turnout rates of individuals discharged from the criminal justice system before and after New York, New
Mexico, and North Carolina implemented notification. Because only those people discharged after the laws were implemented receive the notification treatment, we wish to interpret any difference we observe between the turnout rates
of individuals discharged from the criminal justice system before and after implementation as the effect of the law changes. The biggest threat to such an interpretation is that these cohorts differ in other ways aside from their exposure to
notification. We adopt an empirical specification that draws on the regression
discontinuity design (RDD) literature to account for these other potential differences between those who are discharged before and after notification.

Graphical analysis
Our analysis begins by plotting registration and turnout rates as a function of
the date of discharge as is standard in RDD analysis. If notification laws are causing ex-felons to register and to vote at greater rates, we should observe an
increase in registration and turnout that corresponds to the start of notification.
Figure 1 shows little evidence of such an increase in New York. The top panel
looks at the percentage of discharge records that match an active voter registration record. This panel shows a downward slopping trend, indicating that individuals are more likely to be registered the more time has passed since discharge.
The declines in registration are particularly pronounced for cohorts discharged
just after the 2008 presidential election and the 2009 New York City mayoral
election.16 Most importantly, we do not observe the jump in registration rates
following the implementation of notification that we would expect to observe if
notification were causing a large increase in participation.
If individuals were being mobilized to register by the information and registration form provided in their discharge packet, we expect some of the registration
to occur in relatively close proximity to their discharge date. However, the middle
panel of Figure 1 shows no increase in registration within 90 days of parole discharge after notification begins. Only about 1 percent of individuals register
within 90 days of discharge in most quarters. The exceptions are quarters immediately before presidential elections, when a substantially higher percentage of
ex-felons immediately register to vote. Thus, while Table 2 shows a slightly higher
rate of registration within 90 days in the postnotification cohort, Figure 1 suggests that this likely reflects the mobilizing effects of the 2012 presidential election rather than the effect of notification.
The final panel of Figure 1 shows relatively similar rates for the 2012 presidential election turnout in the cohorts discharged just before and after notification begins in New York. Again there appears to be some residual effect of
eligibility in the 2008 presidential and 2009 New York City mayoral election on
the turnout rates. Among the cohort discharged after 2009 New York City

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236

THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

0
0

0

0

0

O

0

0

..

.06

.08

..

.04

0

.02

O

2009q1

2010q1

2011q1

.11

2008q1

O

Percent Matched to Immediate
Post−Discharge Registration

Percent Matced to Active Registration
.16
.18
.2
.22
.24
.26

Figure 1
Registration and 2012 Turnout by Quarter of Discharge in New York

2008q1

2009q1

2010q1

2011q1

2012q1

0
0

0

.1

0

.09

0

0

0
0

• •

•

0

.08

Percent Matched to 2012
General Election Vote

2012q1

.. . . . .

.07
2008q1

•

2009q1
2010q1
2011q1
Year and Quarter of Discharge
0

No Notification

•

•

0
0

•

•

2012q1

• Pamphlet & Registration Form

mayoral election, 2012 turnout rates range between 7 and 9 percent with no clear
time trend or evidence of a jump after notification.
Figure A6 and Figure A7 in the appendix replicate Figure 1 for New Mexico
and North Carolina, respectively. Both figures in the appendix are similar to
Figure 1 in that they show little difference in registration and turnout rates
before and after ex-felons are notified about their voting rights. Figure A6 and
Figure A7 both show that registration increases in the lead up to a presidential
election. Unlike in New York, there is a less clear relationship between time since
discharge and registration and turnout. There also appears to be an increase in
registration in both states and 2008 turnout in North Carolina among those discharged immediately before the 2008 presidential election.
Put together, these figures cast doubt on the hypothesis that these state’s notification programs dramatically increase registration and turnout. In all three
figures, we observe similar registration and turnout rates in the cohorts discharged just before and after the notification laws take effect. As these cohorts
should be similar except in their exposure to notification, we would expect an
increase in registration and turnout among those discharged immediately after
notification begins if these laws were having a large effect on participation. While

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Do Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?

237

we cannot rule out that there was a small increase in registration and turnout
because of notification based on these figures, we can rule out the 5 to 10 percentage point increase in turnout that Meredith and Morse (2013) estimated to
have occurred in Iowa because of notification.

Empirical specification
Having observed little graphical evidence of participation differences before
and after notification, we next develop an empirical specification that tries to
quantify how much participation changed after notification began. The biggest
challenge to doing so is that individuals who receive notification differ from
those who do not in terms of the amount of time that has passed since discharge. Time since discharge may relate to registration and turnout in a number of ways. Individuals who have been discharged for longer have more
opportunity to be exposed to voter registration. Time since discharge also likely
reduces the probability of still residing in the state and increases the probability
of being disenfranchised again by a new conviction. The characteristics of those
individuals discharged before and after the laws are implemented may also differ in both observable and unobservable ways as a result of populations trends
or other changes in state law.
Separating the effect of notification and time since discharge involves a tradeoff between potential bias and efficiency. The most comparable individuals are
those who were discharged in close proximity to one another. Thus, comparing
the participation of those who were discharged just before and after the implementation of notification provides a straightforward test of the effect of notification. However, restricting the sample in such a way restricts our statistical power
to detect small differences in participation between the two cohorts. Expanding
the sample to include people discharged in a wider time frame gives us more
statistical power to detect differences between the two cohorts, but requires us
to make more assumptions about the relationship between time since discharge
and political participation. We develop a specification that includes everyone
discharged after the previous presidential election to maximize our statistical
power, while noting that figures in the previous section also show little difference
in the participation rates of individuals discharged just before and just after notification begins.
The equation below illustrates how we attempt to separate the effect of notification from the effect of time since discharge. We want to estimate the determinants of whether discharge i takes action Yi (e.g., registers or votes). Our
primary parameter of interest, θ, is the coefficient on Notifiedi the indicator for
whether a discharge i occurred after the state implemented notification. We also
include a 4th order polynomial of DischargeYearsi to control for the direct effect
that time since discharge has on political participation in a relatively flexible
manner.17 We control for a vector of individual level characteristics, Xi, listed in
Table 5 that we observe about dischargees in each state. Assuming that εi is

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238

THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

distributed normal, we estimate the parameters in the equation using a standard
probit analysis.
4

Pr (Yi = 1) = Pr (α + θNotifiedi + ∑γ j DischargeYearsij + β X i + i > 0).
j =1

Regression results
The results presented in Table 5 continue to show no evidence of any increase
in registration and turnout after notification is implemented. There is not a statistically significant positive coefficient on being discharged after notification
begins in any of the six regressions. There is a marginally significant negative
coefficient on being discharged after notification in North Carolina, although this
result is not robust to alternative specification.
While postnotification discharge does not relate to registration and turnout,
Table 5 shows that a number of additional characteristics of ex-felons do relate
to the probability of registering and voting. Age, which is well known to positively relate to political participation generally in the United States (see for
example Rosenstone and Hansen [1993]), also positively relates to turnout in
all three states. The increase in the probability of turnout from an additional
year of age ranges from 0.16 percentage points in New Mexico to 0.43 percentage points in North Carolina.18 Females also register and vote at higher
rates. The difference is particularly stark in New York, where females are
about 7 percentage points more likely to be registered and 5 percentage points
more likely to have voted in 2012 than their male counterparts. Much smaller
differences are observed in North Carolina and New Mexico. These point
estimates likely understate the actual gender differences because our matching procedure is more likely to miss female matches (Meredith and Morse
2013).
One additional interesting relationship in Table 5 is that between race and
participation. Much like Burch (2011), we find that African Americans vote and
register at higher rates than whites in both New York and North Carolina. The
difference in the probability of black turnout relative to white turnout is about
5 percentage points in New York and 10 percentage points in North Carolina.
While some of this difference may relate to Barack Obama’s presence at the top
of the ticket in 2008, unreported regressions also show that black turnout was
about 2.5 percentage points higher in the 2010 midterm election when Obama
was not on the ballot. Conversely, ex-felons who are neither black nor white vote
at significantly lower rates in both New York and North Carolina.

Conclusion
Concerns about ex-felons being misinformed about their voting rights, in concert
with a wide range of activists promoting the issue of notification, has spurred a

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239

Do Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?

Table 5
Determinants of Ex-Felon Registration and Turnout
Voted in:
Active Registration

Dependent Variable
State
Discharged with
Notification
Discharged with
ACLU Notification
Discharged with
State Notification
Age
Female
Black
Hispanic
Other

NY

NM

0.005
(0.036)

0.004
(0.057)

0.009
(0.001)
0.250
(0.022)
0.341
(0.017)
0.024
(0.020)
–0.050
(0.039)

0.000
(0.001)
0.050
(0.020)

0.165
(0.151)
–0.137
(0.141)
0.049
(0.050)
–0.006
(0.006)
–1.570
(0.060)

–0.296
(0.174)
0.247
(0.170)
–0.089
(0.063)
0.011
(0.008)
–0.593
(0.085)

Years of supervision
Prison discharge
Years since discharge
Years since discharge2
Years since discharge3
Years since discharge4
Constant

NC

–0.066
(0.028)
–0.126
(0.048)
0.011
(0.000)
0.044
(0.013)
0.383
(0.010)

–0.369
(0.025)
–0.006
(0.003)
–0.126
(0.011)
–0.088
(0.116)
0.016
(0.130)
–0.011
(0.047)
0.002
(0.006)
–0.741
(0.053)

2012

2008

2008

NY

NM

NC

0.020
(0.045)

0.040
(0.065)

0.013
(0.001)
0.302
(0.026)
0.366
(0.022)
–0.082
(0.027)
–0.118
(0.054)

0.008
(0.001)
0.019
(0.024)

0.014
(0.193)
0.023
(0.180)
–0.011
(0.063)
0.002
(0.008)
–2.227
(0.077)

–0.331
(0.203)
0.340
(0.198)
–0.125
(0.073)
0.015
(0.009)
–1.387
(0.099)

–0.008
(0.030)
–0.021
(0.053)
0.016
(0.000)
0.028
(0.015)
0.396
(0.011)

–0.373
(0.030)
0.005
(0.003)
–0.178
(0.012)
–0.246
(0.126)
0.183
(0.142)
–0.064
(0.052)
0.008
(0.006)
–1.321
(0.058)

NOTE: Each column presents the coefficient and standard errors from a distinct probit regression. The North Carolina regressions also include unreported month of discharge fixed effects.
Not all variables are observed in every state. Hispanic is included in “other race” in North
Carolina. The excluded group is a white male discharged prior to notification in New York, a
white male discharged from probation or parole prior to notification in North Carolina, and a
male discharged prior to notification in New Mexico.

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240

THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

number of state legislatures to pass laws that require the state to notify ex-felons
about their voting rights. The evidence presented in this article suggests that
these reforms have been unsuccessful at increasing registration and turnout
among the ex-felon population. We reach this conclusion because we observe
little difference in the registration and turnout rates of individuals discharged
before and after the implementation of notification.
A number of caveats should be applied to our conclusion that notification has
been unsuccessful at increasing participation. Although it is unlikely that we
could observe these data if there were a large participatory effect of notification,
there is a possibility that either sampling or specification error is masking a
smaller effect. Our empirical strategy is also built on an assumption that any
effect of notification on participation will occur quickly after it is implemented.
There are a number of reasons why this may not occur. We cannot be sure that
street-level criminal justice officials adhered to the date of implementation specified by their superiors. The success of notification may also depend on the context. For example, notification may be more effective when it occurs during a
time of heightened political interest, such as the period right before an election
or a well-publicized law change.
We also do not interpret these results as implying that notification cannot
increase participation. It is possible that notification could be ineffective because
ex-felons who wish to vote already invest in learning their rights. However, the
findings in Meredith and Morse (2013) suggest that a substantial number of exfelons can be mobilized by notification. An alternative explanation for the null
results presented here is that a number of features of the notification protocols
adopted by these states might limit their effectiveness. Given that these notification treatments are designed to correct misinformation about voting rights, the
treatments in North Carolina and New York are striking for their lack of clarity.
The voting rights information is buried in densely worded pamphlets. Presenting
information in this manner may be particularly problematic given that a large
percentage of the prison population does not read above a grade-school level
(Kozol 1985). Further, these pamphlets are distributed in an exit packet that
often contains a lot of other important documents, and this may cause information about voting rights to be crowded out.
Contrast these treatments with the letter that Meredith and Morse (2013)
found increased ex-felon turnout by 5 to 10 percentage points in Iowa. First, the
letter in Iowa, two paragraphs long and written in large font, focused solely on
informing ex-felons about what rights were and were not being restored upon
discharge. It was also personally addressed to the dischargee, making it clear
that these voting rights applied to him or her. Moreover, the language used in
the letter conveys not only that the ex-felon is eligible to vote but also that the
state wants him or her to vote. Finally, the letter was sent via mail, and was thus
likely to be read separately from all of the other documents distributed upon
discharge.19

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241

Do Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?

Finally, these findings highlight the importance of thinking about state disenfranchisement policy in broad terms. Much of the academic, legal, and
policy literature on criminal disenfranchisement focuses on the length of time
that individuals remain legally ineligible to vote. However, legal disenfranchisement is only one channel through which criminal disenfranchisement
affects ex-felon turnout at the polls. A number of policies, such as notification,
can affect the participation rates of the formerly disenfranchised. Because the
flow of individuals out of the criminal justice system at any point in time is
relatively small compared to all individuals who have exited the system across
time, the total number of voters disenfranchised in practice is likely more
affected by de facto disenfranchisement than by small distinctions in when the
voting rights are restored. This means that, ultimately, parties interested in
increasing ex-felon political participation may find it more valuable to use
their resources to develop more effective protocols with which to inform exfelons about their voting rights than fighting legislative battles to extend legal
voting rights.

Appendix
Table A1
Explanatory Variable Means by State
State
Age
Female
Black
Hispanic
Other
Years of supervision
Prison discharge
Years since discharge

NY

NM

NC

40.63
0.092
0.462
0.261
0.038
N/A
0.000
2.08

37.68
0.227
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
N/A
1.94

34.50
0.150
0.548
In Other
0.057
1.46
0.641
2.00

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242

THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

Figure A1
Sample New Mexico Discharge Certificate

NEW MEXICO CORRECTIONS DEPARTME1''T

Form C>-4~101.2
Mmk401/2S/12

Ceninmcc !!CComek!m
This Qrdtl.-. o f ~ of So tcrace Is lsaial ">' 1111 New Mc,dco Qinecdonl Depalmcat ~ - • to NMSA 1971
$,;coon 31-1).1 (C). This 0.nlllaw Is fl!! 11:h: ')' a
_,,l~d oh fclouy In New M.<alro 1ml who~ ssval
hlsllt,:r mlift Sffllrnceaid wlshs IO r ~ to~ la ~w Mexico. l'llnlr.lnt t o ~ 31-1).1 (C). die rc:noa ( ~
o&nckr) da!Fbd bdulv Ila. wved dloo cnlln:ly c<L hlslllff S1.-uten.:e (hldu41ac • tmn of prllMic,,l or ?ffl)le), dlld
~ tllal i:rmm'notln ri,lia on Mtol"4

JICI'""'

I, tbc Ulldsr.si1t1.!4 employee oftb~ New Malct, Q1maJ.o111 Oep.nnwtJl, llact,y tadly Iha the rotm.-tn; ra- who was
-vicled of a l'etOI\Y In ~v Mexico b::I> ttmd Ifie ~ or llae s...-nce ifflrnsed r« du; specifitd r.toay 1nrvic:tiun,
in1:hMlifts 1111 tcmt of fDl)le or rwvbalion:

Na.meoffeluny offender: _ _ _ _ _ _ ___, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __, _____
(l'lnt)

(L&,t)

03~ ofBirth:

(M)°(D)(Y)

Co11nty of convk:(ion: _ _ _ _ _ __

(Mi.Wk,)

Socllll Security Nwnbr. _ _•_ _•_ _

Cau~ Numba: _ _ _ _ _ __

Crime(s): _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __, _____

Dar.: of completion of Sffllfflee: _ _ _ _ __
(M) (D) (Y)
Oo bd\alf' of th~ New Mexico CorT,:,ctions Depilrtrnent:

Name: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __

Tok: _ _ __

Institudo,1: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __

Telephone number: L.J,_____

Address; _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __

S i ~ : _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __

D11teofis.sue: _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __

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243

Do Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?

Figure A2
New York Notification Literature
NO. 9206, Notice of Right to Vote Upon Maxi mum Expiration or Discharge of Sentence

Attachment A

DATE 4/ 16/2013

PAGE3ofl0

.._.. _ _ ,___Uut....,..-.:la _ _ _ ...

Importance of Voting
tn h
is~
Ackhss.
Abra.Nlft'I
Uncoln, by
aled
_
_
_
ollhe ......
th. Cl'tOPN ,-r,d for~ CMtOPt.. • It ffiMil'IS thM

~

.,. noc heft to..,._.. OU",o.....-nment:. but that

Qllr°~...-nmtnt l1her-.to......,•w-,-nd-.
~

the rigt. to ckdde who wWI ~ us
and hew~ want to b,t ~
. Jt tManS
that we have one of the 9'Utest rights any frM
~ can NI.,.: CM ngtc t o ~
Vot,ng IS a right that. d'wvu;hout history, many
N-YeFoughtforandsacrific:H~noto

conb,_,•

Mh..w., n's a noht th. p.ople
to ftot,t
,., ............... ol ...... _ l h e

world $till do not <Wljoy, A $ ~ . wt ha,,,.
the: ;rut ~ to ..,_ in a frN society Md
vot:int is tht noht that ,n,a1c:.,. us MM.

Your vote~ your local Md natiOnal luden
- b l o fo, the-...,. they mab, Your
...~Mnds•Moff:~abouttM~you
tNnlc .,.. iff'IPOf't>nt. Your ¥Ota alfwma ow ntt,b
.s"'-eiti~toe1tct~o0¥tl'l"ll'Mf'land
uke part In 6-nocncy. Without voeing. ttw.
could
N
d...-noo-acy.
Mr/Nl'O"
_____ _

"°

tovot.~tt..-yfw litc."""'-t90"tonin
the ~ doesn\ afhd than. The trvth
is.it doff ..wim.anyway.s.El«t:Hoffic smal.•
.. toru.oldecl.s.omthMClil'l._,,,.aff.ctf'Ol,IJ'"
It,., The Pt-9'11dent and Congreu you elect Wll
<kcid• ~ to ra.M or ~ taus. tNb
ec.onom.c: pol,ou that could d.ct your job and
d«iffwhen or if to l..tM rMlt.ryf.offe.
.twloit.l~wt!Kh"'""h•-•n-.n
,...... iftVMCN~ and ~
I .rr.ct on you.

n...-.

~ ~ a n d )'OUr O:W'MU.w'lity.

N'lM~ ..-...,.,._1'M~MW9-'-.r

~ - M i t • ~ ... _..... ...

~•M~effldl;i.,,ltovtd!e....,..

etuia.~.· - ·.......... -........
...._...9ft•wyU.-., •a--.cracy,...._._

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..,,.._._....._... w..,_H, ,...

. . . . llta-.Jo,ltyflldloa ....... Ol~that l•

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,..,,,.._...,_,..~n11-.~.,.

......... .......

-..taltMn•-~IIIIMl-■II . . . . . . . . .
~

~

TENY

www.vote-ny.com

Vot• bec.-.rM you UN about your COfflffil.ll'llty,
Vote bee-Mn. you b.i~ in he ~
and want to add ~ ~ Vote bKtUM it w1H
male rou f..l 900d to parboPM• and h.ve •
uy. V o t e ~ It's the: "Ohl thing

to_.

Downloaded from ann.sagepub.com at Stanford University Libraries on May 4, 2014

244

THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

Figure A3
More New York Notification Literature
Attachment C

HO. 9205, Notice of Right to Vote Upon Maximum Expirallon or Disch•ge of Sentence

PAGE 10 of 10

DATE 4/ 16/2013

New York State Voter's Bill of Rights
As a registered voter, you have the RIGHT TO:
VOTE: The nght to vote "1cludes votrng for can<lodotes on<l quest,ons on the bollot an<l hov,ng suffiaent
t1111e to vote
HAVE YOUR VOTES COUNT: Vote on a voting system thot IS ,n VIOtkong condrt,on and that WII allow
votes to be occurately cast.
SECRECY IN VOTING: Secrecy., voting WIii be preserved for all eleciions
FREEDOM IN VOTING : Cast your vote, free from coercion or intimidation by elections officers or any
otherJ>8™)0
PERMANENT REGISTRATION : Once regIst red to vol . you cont"1ue lo remain qualified to vol from on
address within your county or c,ty
ACCESSIBLE ELECTIONS: Non-<1Iscr1111Inalory equal &eeeSS to the eleci,on system for all voters
including the eldel1y disabled altemauve language minonues. mi rtary an<l overseas c,tizens, as required
by Federal and State taws
ASSISTANCE IN VOTING: You may request ass,st nee to vote because of blindness, dosabthty, or
1nabtt1ty to read or wrrte
INSTRUCTION IN VOTING: You con v,ew a sampl ballot., this polling plac pnor to voling. and befor
enlenng or approaching a prrvacy booth scanner or ballot marking dev,ce, you may request h pin how 10
mart< and'or ces1your ballot
AFFIDAVIT VOTING: Whenever your name does not appear 11 lhe poll ledg r or the voter registration or
ervollmen1 hsl, or you do not proYlde odenbfoc;eloon when requ..ed, you WIii be off red an affidavrt bellol

FIRST TIME VOTER? Instructions on how to vote are available on the sample ballOI posted m lhos polling
If you need additional h p. pnor 10 signing ,n, ask the inspectors at your polling sit

plo

CASTING A VOTE ON PAPER BALLOT Review your ballol to be sure you have cast your votes OS you
inlended Be sure lo vote ror the noo,ber of cen<loda1es perm~led for each otroce on your ballol Casbng
more voles lhan the mruumi.m number permilled ., any conies! (overvot1ng) w~I VOid your voles for lhot
contesl only If you moke a mostake on your ballot, relum rt to the "1speclors on<l you will be given another
After you .,sen your ballol In10 lhe scanner. wait for the message which tells you your ballot was
successfully scanned.
PROBLEMS? Federal and Stole laws prohobc octs of fraud ond mosrepresentobon on vobng When you
encoun1er problems In vo11ng, con1001 your local county board or 1he Staie Board or Elecioons

~

TENY

www.vote-ny.com

•

Downloaded from ann.sagepub.com at Stanford University Libraries on May 4, 2014

.

245

Do Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?

Figure A4
North Carolina Notification Brochure (Front)
Pflll)a" wa'IQ~rial. If you u• • l'.O Box
.. VOIII tefMt edd,ttt, tN fo,m.,... noc bl
prOC1•-d. IH--,,•P O. llaxm.yN

NORTH CAROLINA
STATE BOARD OF
ELECTIONS

vNCf .. Yolll' IMil119 lddmt I
n,_ _,.._ty bo,a,d •f

. . . , t iO,U l'l'IUll.t - j w ,

,--to~fllfO!'fflMlaNt'JS....,... ........
,.,_.,.,,d..,.1fy,ovwl-,10vota~th••IN•

1io1t.. O!Mlrwi.. ,

you,_

r.ei■t•

tnd - . . •'

My0M-5~6it•ln.'fOUl'60_.,. . .lifrle°""9•
St.op ADN111at Vo11nt l • •IM..tiMI ill Stait
21. vo,.,

.._.,,Mio!\ io ,_,.,..._ Md yOu

Know Your
Voting Rights

4o,...,-c110N9st•,lo,•811h • INOO<fl.

bit counry bNld of .-.Cdon, wlll NnCI •
c~ 10 111M ~ H t 'i'OtJ htld oit f t fo,m,
with 1M n11n1 d your llf9CiR.t and whln
~Cllt90IOVOW(\OUl'"POl.l'Gpl_.1.
STElt ~ VOT'I:
v-cianwii.

•ttt... polng p-istedon

rour-.o ..,Cltd, •Ont-S.-~•. orti.,.
ablentubaAtt .

for .mitiDnal hbmaton on votw NogiMJMIDfl,
lbelni.. bllott. Of loc:M!f\9 .,.ov COllflt'f boatd
olot.e1N:111,.ecn~t

Fill' _,.nkln• 011 Nw NI YDt• by abNnlNlvt or M • On.-$t.op ¥Olint k-G•lvn, -

$t . . S o . . i d ~

l'.O. Box272M
~ NC 17511•7lM
Tolqih;Mw ltlt) ?3)-11?3

S~fol\rllotinaidt<11fit..t.odl....

~~. Iii' YOU M0\15 Y,ltTl•l.'N Tl-Mi
COUNTY, YOU MUST~ YOUR COUNTY
IIOA,RO OF (I.ICTIOHS OF TMI MOV1 . l(J VOU
MOVE OUT Cl' TMi oout(fV CR STAT£, YOU
WST RE-AIOIS"lUI TO VOT( IN n4e NEW
COl,IHTY OR $Tl.Tl YOU M.lY A\.$O USi TM(
SAME FOAM TO CANCEL YOUA RtGG"TRATION

IN YOUR OlO COUNTY OR STATE

Yn~: -•IIOe••• re-■

Or~ltolf!W9.
1,(IOf-~VOT£

II 'fllll , - . ewr bNn • ml_.. _ _ o, flllan

""°"..,.noc"'"ofwurvocin;rioft11or

h.OY9~1"9dc0dlot1ilno ln.forll'IICoOtl from
,;p,,..m..-.nl officwh CIOUt 'fO/IJ6 voting iightt,
GIINIC~~,MAQ.uollfotthC~

-~·

A Misdemeanant
& Ex-Felon ' s
Guide to Voting
in North Carol ina

V~Aig,i11~
AffWlicat Civil lbrtie• Union of
NC Cll4'1• t - 6 o f o.o_,.
508 Noni\ Ha-riito- s:.-...

P.O. Box 28004
Rllligh, HC 27111.«104
C919tl3-4-34M
tcM'ICOncc.rr.com
w.bfle • - .::tuc:lnonlw:aR;1lona org

IWli9'1, NC2H03
PMfl« t1t·U1·7 113
Fn: 91t,711.01lS

Vilit.,.rW.trc.

wwwtf>O♦ t tt11• nc..,,

Figure A5
North Carolina Notification Brochure (Back)
STEPS FOR MISDEMEANANTS AND
PERSONS AWAITING TRIAL

mi..._.

In NDrth C:•ohn-. beir,v --.Wwd of •
--doN1101_...,,1"--.,oulo•.,._,,~to
- •· YOJewtVO'l• ....... ~'f'Ol,jl'""-'o,

,_.,__.,_o,¥¥tlia-.ibnttrialfora
f.iotlyOt~♦-MttnOt,

FollOwWll\tiKOf>t~

. . 11\tf:'f'Oll,Cl't"°'*in . . . n t > l t ~.

ST£P 1: RBJISTER TO YOT£

STEPS FOR FORMER FELONS

STEl' 2.: VOTE

It 'f'OUat•aD'.• , 'l'OIICat1,t0-tlilnWIOl'IM 't'OIJI

pollirel _. Oft bier.Ion Day« •

Onl•Scop
vro:lng 1... bllow>, 'fQ.I m~ lf• wto wil'Q
anAll..-,t"Blllot , lfyou•egoin;tobe
il'ICatcttM.tlli on EIW.tJCl'I D11¥. You t.M'I \OOte bv
!Nil iJr1C1 an lbllMN blllclll:,

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lO ~ 00,_V ~
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-.r.i~ 50 dav■

m_,.

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,..1m,aiartlonn. Youc..-,g,et. eformfrom
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lb-.-y, o,onlil'l9 .c !'l'.r:w ffl f f ! ".'iVL

il . . . ...,.,.YoUNIWM .·
UN lhl addta• cf 1N P'aOt wf'lffe YoU
would 1w II you lllffl"♦ not In jail, TNt
addr•n it I N pl-»
inund 10
retwnafltr~
on1t.♦ form,

w,_• "°"

Mltl tN completed to,m 10 Int COU"IIY bo•O
o f ♦tlctionll In ft coumv
you W\le..

·wtw•

ttyoi,QOl'l(:ll,..,. ♦ O ltwt'tlle:ienM. ,OVWIII

be alked to !l'ldude pa-1 ol vow Sod.s.arify nutnW. Youmt,flll'dyo,uroowtty
boatd of INC:tlonl by eontae.1i'IO lht 91.. .
9oatlS c,t r11ia1ont. Com11:1 lr4ormalon II on
ti-. lid. or 1Ns llfochure. "h"M oo,npkted

IO'm n't.1111 lrdudo

Yl)U"

p n ~ 11, ..1

.clclrOM90 IM' 'fOUC., IN 1111.eorn1t-.
P">P" VQll11f <1•rte1. If 'fOiJ wffl• , P. O.

nvx-~1111,.a~-.,thab-mdnot
beptOClaNM , Howt.,.,. ♦ P,O , hot~bit

You can r1911t1J t=o 1/0lit and f'IIQUUI.,
llbNm• Nllclc M It-. NrM lirM, Bli aw.
th•'°.. r..,..c hi llwilod ,.-t,--.._h to
r♦cei ..... ~ •. and mail yc,ur regia,r•ion
fo,m 10 vcur c:ourav bOatCI cf •1ection1 to
'""11hit
tlO .... .,...,_

~-,on°'"""""

Dct.v-a bt-foreeloGlione:,.

"°"
W'lf~"'-Wllll-.:Ml'O-. YoufNv~.-•
.,u,..
t h• the ballot 1te ~ 10--,

n:c1...-ir,a N ... wha,.. yeu .,.. irc.oeratod,
n-.Nlb1cen••tie~1o•ll"ltndo.-

,.._~andO..,-e,_e.,..bt~1'1eS.-0..10
'fCMol • ._ _ _ , , only you ffl,r,/ _ . _ h
b4bt•

~--lollow t Mil'l«'VC'IJONMtN..,_. .

21 vowrool«1ailcl\iio~and'Ji0'1
dono1,-dto,. .•for•"°'tllc1ion
The COUll'f bo-,d 0, eitdions wll Nl"U •

c•dtotl-. ~re•'f'OIJlist.donttiek,nn,
witht:het1.-TM1C1 I VO-J6 p~ . . t w h s e
you can to to YOW t',Our ·poang ~--1.

th♦

vou mev tho regla:er

At• qUllilM c:kian,

c«nv't On♦-510. SftiN.

Stop Abeent.-VllmlJ I• tpefflied in Stap

1'1.♦gl...,Sftil0¥0ilt.'9~Clf lCll"t"tl~

Iha ODUnty wt.o VoU

1■ tidli

af'I...- yvu

d l■l.hayt..

If 'fOII haw comc:'ettlli . . parts ol 't'l)Ur ■-n lonoa
rota 111ot1,COMkllon Of Pia_,. bNI\ PlfdOMd,

to••

c..an,.

YOU ere •lldth
In N~•
To
..,c,idoo~difl~it•w/ltl ..0--... N
~

IW!tAJld alfl fOI' your C.nificato of
Rtflc,rldon of Fort.it.cl f\lgl'U of Cllinnlnlo ffOln

-.

vov,fWaalngoffic«tN.C. 0.n. Sui: . 13-2J,
TIM ii not nte-•rv to rogiitter or
but IU'f
m••il•...... lholMVOUlflCOIIC•I""'

.

'°°'••

In orNr to voto in NorU'I C:en>liM IINCt.on, folo.
N•1ec,elfleclboloW.

STD> 1: MOl&lat tO VOTf
l"ot!Mf convl~itd l olonl fflUSI f♦Qllll♦f ,;•n
ioVQC,1n-,.:,vrC1.1n.,.CQ1,n1YCll1t.,.nQI.

ba'.lot.. Fo, • ~ • t ... . _ .. . llallot mu.i

be wl1nHMCI b y t - pw-.; if f'IOt.
b~will~boOOl.!"'*6

1 he~-if~~IOvot♦ intNIIMC­

tlon O.l'letwht, vou can r-ol•• Md YO!• flt
a,,v 0..-.SIOP SiH in.....- OC1UMY dllfnO 0 -

1a,1J.

.,_,i■ ~lyou wllrw■dmcloti.!o1■ vutmvin

~.

lflhtOOUl'llYboanlof ....lloNdlJtormir-.•
th• -,ou - •llttit; to voce, tt,oy will meil 1hot
re,gi.waion form ..-.d at-,u,e Wlol 10 l'O\,I.
ff\.111' bit eotecl 10 •nd • doc-nc thow•

Tl-. eowf!V bow Cl4

♦flctioM must teceiw
vcur comolr.♦d fOfffl • I t • lS d.llp Mbe

If 'IOU• COIWiet♦d OI • Mtony In Nonh CIIIO.......
you ttmpOranlv loN you- c ~ p rigN:1.
~'YOUl"niai-.10-wo.._ AAvprio,t♦Qllltta­
iioa, .,.,_, hed ~ T(lur t.lony otinwlclkwl It
CMC<llld ~ lh♦ co,,,n,y DOW o l ♦ltc.tion♦ WI"
no ection on your pwt, An'f actM\Pl io f"IQ:ct110r
toll'Otltw,..yuu11r1Mactwaift10nitalllll:lny.
HorNtwr,att.COITIPN1in9IIIMl«tNof"°"'
Nronce tinduct!n; Paroi.. prdlMlon, nl
re•ltiaAonJ. you do llO'I ~ 10 d o ~ ~ to
l\lwlyOlll'Cfl!Mnl!'iprifN:1,.IKO.:l. ThooN
llgl'llt Ml lu10l"NCicMIY ,..._0Nld (N .C . Ckn.. SIM.

and\'OltMthlNM1ffll•on♦ olyou­

Or.Stop Ab-NnlM

VC11.i-,gM11b17d♦'(l«.-t~lht3rd

T....tdt,f ..-wtil tht Sat\lrdt,f • 1:00 p.M . •
COIM'Wl'f boltd O! •'«xiono ScM!'lil countiecl cffor n.itiple ON-Stop ati.ent• -wo"tin;
litK. Check Mth Yol.l' local cou,ty botat of

'fOt,11

~~ rot ytAJtO.-.Sti» VOlil'Q

.......

°"*•

at'ldtoc.a..._ PJopitrlarwltlcMlonl1,..

Yau eat N9l«•r l,y moll u.lng • moll-In Ylllll..reo-i,--.On fCllffl. Yauc.-,NCl41N'41tNofom,
i,., wJCirq or eoli,.. 'IOU' ~ v bo..-d of
elec6or,a o"iOo, visiting • Jl'A,lic lilt,_.,, or
cnu,,. • v.-Nw tllCloo • • • ne u,

M• 1i. comcilttld form to IN COl.ft'I botnl
cl.i.cdoftlllltl-.~·wt.i.youllw".
If voudo not ,..,,. a dri.,..,■ bn•. you ll¥il
be .-dtoh:lude~a'V'Xa"Soeil'
S.O..kyl'Ul'IMr. YOUf'll/ff.ndvou,COWff';'

t:o.-d of election♦ by cortt.-:ting tht St••
So.-d 0, 8',ctiorla, Cort.Id hfomuiion h on
th♦ bd.oflti•!Nod'aatl .

"TMCO.~

IOffflmut1~yourOh'fllc•av♦i1i«1•

c,-...-tot"« vouunN 11.tt.o -,u,,.

Downloaded from ann.sagepub.com at Stanford University Libraries on May 4, 2014

246

THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY

Percent Matched to Immediate
Post−Discharge Registration
.01
.02
.03
.04
.05

Percent Matched to Active Registration
.2
.22
.24
.26
.28

Figure A6
Registration and 2008 Turnout by Quarter of Discharge in New Mexico

...

0
2005q1

2006q1

2007q1

2008q1

2004q1

2005q1

2006q1

2007q1

2008q1

Percent Matched to 2008
General Election Vote
.11
.12
.13
.14
.15

2004q1

2004q1

2005q1
2006q1
2007q1
2008q1
Year and Quarter of Discharge

Certificate Upon Request Automatic Certificate

.15
.1

......

0
2005q1

2006q1

2007q1

2004q1

2004q1

2008q1

Percent Matched to 2008
General Election Vote
.2
.21
.22
.23

2004q1

.05

Percent Matched to Immediate
Post−Discharge Registration

.2

.35
.34
.33
.32
.31

Percent Matched to Active Registration

Figure A7
Registration and 2008 Turnout by Quarter of Discharge in North Carolina

0

2005q1

2006q1

0

..
2005q1
2006q1
2007q1
2008q1
Year and Quarter of Discharge

No Notification

Pamphlet Pamphlet & Registration Form

Downloaded from ann.sagepub.com at Stanford University Libraries on May 4, 2014

0

e

•

O

•

0

2007q1

2008q1

Do Voting Rights Notification Laws Increase Ex-Felon Turnout?

247

Notes
1. The Brennan Center data reported to us by Erika Wood, Deputy Director of the Democracy
Program, in an email dated March, 11, 2011.
2. In addition, Florida and Virginia passed laws mandating that the state provide information to individuals about how they can restore their voting rights. Bills were also introduced in Alabama and New
Jersey that included notification requirements as part of a package of reforms that expanded the voting
rights of the criminally disenfranchised.
3. In fact, Mitt Romney, the eventual Republican nominee, did run television ads criticizing Rick
Santorum for voting in support of ex-felon voting rights in the U.S. Senate (Dinan 2012).
4. Louisiana is not included in our analysis because criminal justice discharge records are not public
record.
5. For example, Burch (2011) defines a match as a voter file record that has the same last name, first
name, and date of birth as a record in the discharge data.
6. Individuals who do not go onto parole upon discharge from prison will also not appear in our data.
Auxiliary data show between 10 and 20 percent of prison discharges do not go on parole.
7. As a point of comparison, 49, 24, and 26 percent of all active registrants affiliate as Democrats,
Republicans, and with no party or a minor party, respectively.
8. As a robustness check, we also run the New York matching procedure initially screening on birth
year for a random sample of 10 percent of the New Mexico discharges between 1/1/2005–9/30/2008; 2.7
percent of the observations in this sample did not match to an observation in the voter file using our
original matching procedure, but did match to an observation in the voter file using the more inclusive
name matching procedure. Further examination revealed that a majority of these matches appeared to be
a discharge record matching to another person’s voter file record, suggesting that we would not want to
use this matching procedure even in the absence of computational constraints.
9. As a point of comparison, 51, 32, and 18 percent of all active registrants affiliate as Democrats,
Republicans, and with no party or a minor party, respectively.
10. Around one-third of dischargees between November 3, 2004, and September 30, 2008, recidivate.
11. One concern about using a 2013 voter file to measure 2008 turnout is that a number of 2008 voting
records may have been attenuated out of the file.
12. For example, we do not know whether an individual who was discharged in October 2007, at age
23 would be 28 or 29 in April 2013.
13. Of the observations in this sample, 6.3 percent did not match to an observation in the voter file
using our original matching procedure, but did match to an observation in the voter file using the more
inclusive name matching procedure. Like in New Mexico, further analysis suggested that most of these
matches were likely false matches.
14. The turnout rate is about 2 percentage points larger if we condition on not recidivating as we do in
New Mexico and New York.
15. Forty-three, 31, and 26 percent of active registrants affiliate as Democrats, Republicans, and with
no party or a minor party, respectively.
16. This is consistent with the finding of Meredith (2009) that eligibility to vote in previous elections
increases the probability of being registered and voting in subsequent elections.
17. An alternative approach would be to use a more traditional RDD specification that estimates separate polynomials for time since discharge before and after notification (Meredith and Morse 2013). This
approach attempts to calculate the discontinuous change in political participation on the exact date that
notification begins. Because we received slightly conflicting information about the exact date that the
notification mandate began in some states and we cannot be sure that street-level criminal justice officials
began implementing notification on this date, we decided not to use this approach.
18. All effect sizes reported, holding all other variables at their sample means.
19. Sending information via mail is not without its own downsides, as contact information for this
population may quickly become out of date. Gerber et al. (2013) find that 39 percent of letters were
returned in a field experiment that targeted ex-felons at their last known address.

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