FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT

777

Democratic Contraction?
Political Consequences of
Felon Disenfranchisement in
the United States
Christopher Uggen
University of Minnesota

Jeff Manza
Northwestern University

Universal suffrage is a cornerstone of democratic governance. As levels of criminal
punishment have risen in the United States, however, an ever-larger number of citizens have lost the right to vote. The authors ask whether felon disenfranchisement
constitutes a meaningful reversal of the extension of voting rights by considering its
political impact. Data from legal sources, election studies, and inmate surveys are
examined to consider two counterfactual conditions: (1) whether removing disenfranchisement restrictions alters the outcomes of past U.S. Senate and presidential elections, and (2) whether applying contemporary rates of disenfranchisement to prior
elections affects their outcomes. Because felons are drawn disproportionately from
the ranks of racial minorities and the poor, disenfranchisement laws tend to take more
votes from Democratic than from Republican candidates. Analysis shows that felon
disenfranchisement played a decisive role in U.S. Senate elections in recent years.
Moreover, at least one Republican presidential victory would have been reversed if
former felons had been allowed to vote, and at least one Democratic presidential
victory would have been jeopardized had contemporary rates of disenfranchisement
prevailed during that time.

T

he right to vote is a cornerstone
of democratic governance and a fundamental element of citizenship in democratic
societies—one that “makes all other political rights significant” (Piven and Cloward
2000:2). Although the timing and sequencing of the establishment of formal voting
rights has varied from country to country, it
has almost always been a slow, contested,
Direct all correspondence to Christopher
Uggen, Department of Sociology, University of
Minnesota, 267 19th Avenue South #909, Minneapolis, MN 55455 (uggen@atlas.socsci.umn.
edu). Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Washington, D.C., August 2000 and the American Society of Criminology in San Francisco, November 2000. This research was supported by grants from the National
Science Foundation (#9819015) and the Individual Project Fellowship Program of the Open
Society Institute. The Youth Development Study

and uneven process (Bowles and Gintis
1986:43–44, 56; Collier 1999; Rokkan 1970:
31–36; Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and
Stephens 1992; Therborn 1977). As Dahl
(1998) puts it, “In all democracies and republics throughout twenty-five centuries the
rights to engage fully in political life were
limited to a minority of adults” (p. 89). Political and economic elites often resisted the
extension of voting rights to subordinate
was supported by the National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development (HD44138) and
the National Institute of Mental Health
(MH42843). We thank Clem Brooks, Jack Goldstone, John Hagan, Paul Hirschfield, Alexander
Keyssar, Ryan King, Marc Mauer, John
McCarthy, John Markoff, Jeylan Mortimer,
Katherine Pettus, Joachim Savelsberg, and Sara
Wakefield for helpful suggestions or materials,
and Melissa Thompson, Angela Behrens, Janna
Cheney, Kendra Schiffman, Marcus Britton, and
Jinha Kim for research assistance.

American Sociological Review, 2002, Vol. 67 (December:777–803)

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AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

groups, including women, youth, the nonpropertied, workers, poor people, racial and
ethnic groups, and others (Keyssar 2000;
Markoff 1996:45–64; Wiebe 1995).
Yet over the course of the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries, restrictions on the franchise within countries claiming democratic
governance have gradually eroded, and universal suffrage has come to be taken for
granted as a key component of democracy in
both theory and practice (Dahl 1998:90).
One recent survey reports that by 1994, fully
96 percent of nation-states claimed to formally enfranchise adult men and women
citizens alike (Ramirez, Soysal, and
Shanahan 1997:735). 1 To proclaim democratic governance today means, at a minimum, universal suffrage for all citizens.
We consider a rare and potentially significant counter-example to the universalization
of the franchise in democratic societies: restrictions on the voting rights of felons and
ex-felons. Felon disenfranchisement constitutes a growing impediment to universal political participation in the United States because of the unusually severe state voting
restrictions imposed upon felons and the
rapid rise in criminal punishment since the
1970s. While a number of other countries
(including the United Kingdom, Russia, and
many of the post-Soviet republics) deny voting rights to prison inmates, the United
States is unique in restricting the rights of
nonincarcerated felons (who, as we show
below, make up approximately three-quarters of the disenfranchised population). In
many European countries, including Ireland,
Spain, Sweden, Denmark, and Greece, as
well as Australia and South Africa, inmates
retain the legal right to vote even while in
prison (Australian Electoral Commission
2001; Ewald 2002; Fellner and Mauer
1998).2 In a number of other countries, voting restrictions are contingent on the length
1

To be sure, many of these countries have incomplete or “façade” democracies without fully
competitive elections (Markoff 1996, chap. 5).
Even within the most democratic countries, barriers to participation inevitably persist (e.g., registration requirements, barriers faced by disabled
voters, difficulties accessing polling places, especially when elections are held on working
days). Every country excludes noncitizen immigrants from voting in national elections.

or type of sentence imposed (among these
countries are Austria, Belgium, Italy, and
Norway in Europe, and Canada, Australia,
and New Zealand elsewhere). Among
postindustrial democracies, the United
States is virtually the only nation to permanently disenfranchise ex-felons as a class in
many jurisdictions, and the only country to
limit the rights of individuals convicted of
offenses other than very rare treason or election-related crimes. Finland and New
Zealand disenfranchise some ex-felons for
specific election offenses, but only for a limited time (Fellner and Mauer 1998). Germany allows, by judicial discretion, the disenfranchisement of those convicted of election offenses and treason for a maximum of
five years beyond their sentence (Demleitner
2000). The United States stands alone in the
democratic world in imposing restrictions on
the voting rights of a very large group of
nonincarcerated felons.
As many recent analysts have documented
(Donziger 1996; Lynch 1995; Savelsberg
1994; Sutton 2000), the United States is also
exceptional for the rate at which it issues
felony convictions (and thus removes the
right to vote). For example, the incarceration
rate in the United States in 2000 was 686 per
100,000 population, compared with rates of
105 in Canada, 95 in Germany, and only 45
in Japan (Mauer 1997a; U.S. Department of
Justice [henceforward USDOJ] 2002;
Walmsley 2002), and similar disparities can
also be found for nonincarcerated felons.
Whether felon disenfranchisement in the
United States actually constitutes a threat to
democracy, however, is not a simple question. Modern democratic governance entails
a set of macro-political institutions that register citizens’ preferences through (among
other things) regular competitive elections
(Bollen 1979; Dahl 1998; Przeworski 1991,
chap. 1). For democratic governance to be
threatened, disenfranchisement must reach
levels sufficient to change election outcomes. Raw counts of the size of the disen2 We thank Joe Levinson at the Prison Reform
Trust, and Femke van der Meulen at the International Centre for Prison Studies, both in London,
for making the results of their international survey of felon voting rights in Europe available
to us.

FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT

franchised felon population are inconclusive: However much the loss of voting rights
matters for affected individuals, there may
be no effect on political outcomes and
hence, no substantive macro-level impact.
Group-level analyses face the same limitations. Some analysts have focused on the
disproportionate racial impact of felon disenfranchisement (Harvey 1994; Shapiro
1993) and on the widely reported statistical
estimate that approximately one in seven African American men are currently disenfranchised (Fellner and Mauer 1998). While unquestionably important for many reasons,
the disproportionate racial impact of felon
disenfranchisement cannot by itself address
the implications for American democracy as
a whole. Given these considerations, we develop an appropriate, macro-level test. We
suggest that determining whether felon disenfranchisement has had an impact on
American democracy requires examining the
extent to which it has directly altered actual
electoral outcomes.
Because felon voting rules are state-specific, the handful of earlier studies of the political consequences of felon disenfranchisement estimated the average impact of disenfranchisement on election turnout rates
across the states (Hirschfield 2001; Miles
2000). In the analyses developed here, by
contrast, we advance an alternative, counterfactual approach. We examine specific elections and test whether the inclusion of felon
voters at predicted rates of turnout and party
preference would have been sufficient to
change actual election outcomes. We use
data on voter turnout from the Current Population Survey’s Voter Supplement Module,
and data on voting intention from the National Election Study, to estimate the likely
voting behavior of the disenfranchised felon
population. We utilize information on felon
characteristics from censuses and surveys of
prison inmates to estimate the size and social distribution of the felon population.
Combining these data sources, we are able
to estimate the net votes lost by Democratic
candidates in closely contested U.S. Senate
and presidential elections, and to assess the
overall impact of felon disenfranchisement
on the American political landscape. Finally,
we use unique longitudinal data on criminal
background and political behavior to test the

779

reasonableness of the assumptions we make
in our voting analyses, drawing on newly
available data from the 2000 wave of the
Youth Development Study (Mortimer forthcoming).
We present our paper in five parts. First,
we develop the theoretical and historical
background of our topic, situating our empirical analyses in the literatures on democratic theory and American criminal justice.
Second, we describe the logic of our investigation. Third, we address data sources and
methodological issues, presenting our estimates of the size of the disenfranchised felon
population in each state. Fourth, we offer two
sets of results: estimates of the likely turnout
and vote choice of felons if they had the right
to vote, and confirmatory analyses from the
Youth Development Study. Last, we discuss
some of the implications of our results.
THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL
BACKGROUND
Models of Universal Suffrage and
American Democracy

The current state of democracy in America
is frequently characterized as troubled. Low
turnout rates (Piven and Cloward 2000;
Putnam 2000), high levels of public apathy
(Eliasoph 1998), poor information and citizen ignorance (Delli Carpini and Keeter
1996), declining trust in the political system
(Brooks and Cheng 2001; Nye, Zelikow, and
King 1997), a “crisis” of the party system
(Burnham 1982) characterized by rising independent partisanship, candidate-centered
politics, and voter dealignment (Wattenberg
1991, 1994) are among the symptoms most
frequently identified in the recent literature.
Yet, virtually no attention has been paid to
issues surrounding the right to vote.3
A lack of attention to voting rights reflects the predominant scholarly consensus
that suffrage has been a settled issue since
the passage and enforcement of the Voting
Rights Act of 1965. Observing the early ex3

A partial exception to this claim has resulted
from the aftermath of the 2000 presidential election and the controversies growing out of the
Florida vote (e.g., National Commission on Federal Election Reform 2001).

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AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

tension of the franchise to nonpropertied
white men in the United States in the 1830s,
Tocqueville ([1835] 1969) famously asserted, “When a nation begins to modify the
elective qualification one can be sure that
sooner or later it will abolish it altogether.
That is one of the most invariable rules of
social behavior” (p. 59). To be sure, democratic governance has been overturned in
many countries over the course of the past
150 years, in some cases more than once
(Markoff 1996).4 Such societal-wide democratic reversals have typically entailed the
elimination of democratic institutions and
free elections as part of larger shifts to authoritarian forms of governance. In such
cases, the right to vote in meaningful elections is either completely eliminated or rendered irrelevant; selective disenfranchisement of particular groups, however, is
rarely the source of the turn away from democracy. Democratic theory suggests that
suffrage rights are exceptionally sticky:
Once the vote is extended to a particular
segment of the population, it is rarely removed as long as the polity as a whole remains democratic.
The history of suffrage rights in the United
States has appeared to many observers to
have more or less followed a Tocquevillian
model, even if unevenly. Although the
struggle to extend the franchise to all continued for some 130 years after Tocqueville
wrote, the history of suffrage has been generally viewed as a steady march toward universalism (Flanigan and Zingale 2002:31–
34; Verba, Nie, and Kim 1978:5; Williamson
1960). As keen an observer of the limitations
of American democracy as Schattschneider
(1960) could assert that “one of the easiest
victories of the democratic cause in American history has been the extension of the suffrage. . . . The struggle for the ballot was almost bloodless, almost completely peaceful,
and astonishingly easy” (p. 100). The dominant assumption in the literature today is that
4 Among the most important of these antidemocratic waves were the rise of fascist governments in Europe between the two world wars and
the uneven development of democratic governance in Asia and Central and South America after World War II (for a global overview, see
Rueschemeyer et al. 1992).

“at least since the voting rights reforms of
the 1960s, political rights have been universalized in the United States. With relatively
insignificant exceptions, all adult citizens
have the full complement of political rights”
(Verba, Scholzman, and Brady 1995:11).
Recent critical historical accounts have
challenged unilinear models of democratic
extension, emphasizing the uneven development of suffrage over the course of American history (Keyssar 2000; Rogers 1992;
Shklar 1991; Wiebe 1995). This more recent
scholarship describes the halting, and at
times reversible, processes through which
universal suffrage finally came to be adopted
in the United States. Examinations of state
and local variation in the timing and extension of the franchise reveal this pattern most
clearly. The possibility that growing felon
disenfranchisement may constitute a challenge to the legitimacy of democratic elections, however, has not generally been considered (for one notable exception, see
Keyssar 2000:308).
The widespread consensus around the
view that universal suffrage has been attained seems to be driven by a simple but
plausible assumption: There is no reason to
think that disenfranchisement has any substantive impact on political outcomes, as it
affects only a small group of individuals;
hence, while it may be an interesting legal
or philosophical question, it does not by itself pose an empirical threat to democratic
governance. Yet there are reasons to believe
that felon disenfranchisement has not had a
neutral impact on the American political system.
Racial minorities (Kennedy 1997; Mauer
1999; Tonry 1995) and the poor (USDOJ
1993, 2000b; Wilson and Abrahamse 1992;
Wolfgang, Thornberry, and Figlio 1987) are
significantly overrepresented in the U.S.
criminal justice system. We estimate that 1.8
million of the 4.7 million felons and ex-felons currently barred from voting are African
Americans (see Appendix Tables A and B).
Because African Americans are overwhelmingly Democratic Party voters (Dawson
1994; Huckfeldt and Kohfeld 1989; Tate
1993), felon disenfranchisement erodes the
Democratic voting base by reducing the
number of eligible African Americans voters. Moreover, the white felon population is

FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT

principally composed of poor or workingclass offenders (USDOJ 1993, 2000b) who
are also likely to vote Democratic (although
not nearly to the same extent as African
Americans) (Form 1995; Hout, Brooks, and
Manza 1995). According to a nationally representative survey of state prison inmates,
less than one-third of all state prisoners had
completed high school, and fewer than half
reported an annual income of $10,000 in the
year prior to incarceration (USDOJ 1993:3,
2000b). In the southern states, where disenfranchisement laws tend to be most restrictive, education and income levels are even
lower (tables available on request from authors). For all of these reasons, then, the possibility at least exists that felon disenfranchisement affects the outcomes of democratic elections by taking net votes from the
Democratic Party.
Criminal Justice and Felon
Disenfranchisement

The possibility that felon disenfranchisement could be influencing recent electoral
outcomes is largely tied to changes in the
criminal justice regime over the past three
decades. For a 50-year period, from the
1920s to the early 1970s, United States incarceration rates fluctuated within a narrow
band of approximately 110 prisoners per
100,000 people. The policy consensus accompanying this stability was undergirded
by a model of “penological modernism” in
which the rehabilitation of offenders was the
primary goal of incarceration (Rothman
1980). Structural elements of the criminal
justice system, including probation, parole,
and indeterminate sentencing, were designed
to reform offenders and reintegrate them into
their communities. The model began to
break down in the 1960s, however, as Republican presidential candidates Barry
Goldwater (in 1964), and Richard Nixon (in
1968), and other conservative and moderate
politicians (such as Nelson Rockefeller in
New York) successfully promoted more punitive criminal justice policies (Beckett
1997; Jacobs and Helms 1996; Savelsberg
1994). By the mid-1970s, a rising chorus of
conservative scholars, policy analysts, and
politicians were advocating punitive strategies of deterrence and incapacitation, dis-

781

missing the rehabilitative model as “an
anachronism” (Martinson 1974:50; Wilson
1975). These trends continued in the 1980s
and 1990s, with the Reagan, Bush, and
Clinton administrations aggressively focusing the nation’s attention on problems associated with drug use and the incarceration of
drug offenders (Beckett and Sasson 2000).
The success of the conservative crime
policy agenda over the past three decades
has had a remarkable impact, producing an
enormous increase in felony convictions and
incarceration, and a corresponding increase
in rates of felon disenfranchisement. Since
1970, the number of state and federal prisoners has grown by over 600 percent, from
fewer than 200,000 to almost 1.4 million
(USDOJ 1973:350, 2001a:1). Other correctional populations have also grown by rate
and number, with the number of felony probationers and parolees quadrupling from
1976 to 2000 (USDOJ 1979, 2001b). When
jail inmates are added to state and federal
prisoners, approximately 2 million Americans are currently incarcerated, with an additional 4.5 million supervised in the community on probation or parole (USDOJ
2000a), and some 9.5 million ex-offenders
in the general population (Uggen, Manza,
and Thompson 2000).
Not all of these felons and ex-felons are
disenfranchised, as ballot restrictions for felons are specific to each state. Restrictions
were first adopted by some states in the postRevolutionary era, and by the eve of the
Civil War some two dozen states had statutes barring felons from voting or had felon
disenfranchisement provisions in their state
constitutions (Behrens, Uggen, and Manza
2002; Keyssar 2000:62–63). In the post-Reconstruction South, such laws were extended
to encompass even minor offenses (Keyssar
2000:162), as part of a larger strategy to disenfranchise African Americans—a strategy
that also included devices such as literacy
tests, poll taxes, and grandfather clauses (see
Kousser 1974). In general, some type of restriction on felons’ voting rights gradually
came to be adopted by almost every state,
and at present 48 of the 50 states bar felons—in most cases including those on probation or parole—from voting. At least 10
of those states also bar ex-felons from voting, 2 other states permanently disenfran-

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AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

Felons as a Percentage of the U.S.
Voting-Age Population

2.5

2.0

1.5

1.0

.5

0

1974 1976 1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000

Year

Figure 1. Felon Disenfranchisement as a Percentage of the U.S. Voting-Age Population, 1974 to 2000
Note: Estimates are based on life tables constructed from U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Census
Bureau publications (U.S. Bureau of the Census 1948–2000; USDOJ 1948–2001). All sources are described
on pages 785–86.

chise recidivists, and 1 state requires a postrelease waiting period.5
Overall, the combination of an increasing
number of convictions, state laws that prevent most felons from voting, and the steady
cumulative growth of the disenfranchised exfelon population in those states that permanently restrict their voting rights has produced a significant overall growth in the disenfranchised population. Our estimates suggest that the total disenfranchised population
has risen from less than 1 percent of the electorate in 1976 to 2.3 percent of the electorate
5

At present, Vermont and Maine are the only
states that allow incarcerated felons to vote. Referenda eliminated voting rights for Utah and
Massachusetts inmates in 1998 and 2000, respectively. Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, Tennessee (for those convicted
prior to 1986), Virginia, Washington (for those
convicted prior to 1984), and Wyoming permanently disenfranchise felons unless reinstated by
a clemency procedure. Arizona and Maryland
permanently disenfranchise certain recidivists
(those with two or more felony convictions), and
Delaware requires a five-year waiting period.
New Mexico rescinded permanent ex-felon disenfranchisement in 2001, and Maryland narrowed its voting ban on ex-felons in 2002.

in 2000. Figure 1 shows the steady growth of
the percentage of the voting age population
disenfranchised over this period. The slight
dips in the mid-1970s and late-1990s reflect
certain states liberalizing their restrictions on
ex-felons (see Behrens et al. 2002; Manza
and Uggen forthcoming).
PRIOR RESEARCH AND
STRATEGY OF ANALYSIS
Our primary research question is whether
felon disenfranchisement has had meaningful political consequences in past elections.
In other words, would election outcomes
have differed if the disenfranchised had
been allowed to vote? To fully answer this
counterfactual question, we must determine
how many felons would have turned out to
vote, how they would have voted, and
whether those choices would have changed
the electoral outcomes. If so, a closely related consideration is whether disenfranchisement has affected public policy
through feedback processes tied to these
electoral outcomes. Figure 2 provides a
schematic representation of the questions we
pose. Our burden is to estimate who votes
(a), their vote choice (b), and the electoral

FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT

Rising
punishment
rates

(a)

Who
votes?

(b)

Vote
choice

(c)

783

Electoral
outcomes

Policy feedback processes
(d)

Figure 2. Schematic Diagram of the Impact of Felon Disenfranchisement on American Electoral
Outcomes and Policy

outcomes (c). In the conclusion we suggest
some possible views regarding the feedback
process (d) as well.
These are difficult questions. A group the
size of the disenfranchised felon population
could have a considerable political impact,
but given its composition, neither its rate of
political participation nor its preferences are
likely to mirror those of the general population. In this case, and in observational research more generally, information is missing on an important counterfactual condition
(Holland 1986). If we could assume unit homogeneity—that felons would have voted in
the same numbers and with the same preferences as nonfelons—we could simply count
the disenfranchised felons and apply national turnout and party-preference averages.
But because felons differ from nonfelons in
ways that are likely to affect political behavior, this sort of blanket assumption is likely
untenable.
Another way to measure political impact
is to estimate the average causal effect of a
treatment—in this case laws stripping
criminals of their voting rights. In a statelevel analysis of National Election Study
data, Miles (2000) reports that rates of voter
registration and turnout tend to be lower in
states with strict felon disenfranchisement
laws than in states lacking such laws, but
that the differences are not statistically significant (cf. Hirschfield 2001). Although
such studies provide evidence about the statistical significance of the average effect of
disenfranchisement—and suggest that this
average effect is likely to be small—it is
possible that even such small differences
may have great practical significance.
First, it may be reasonable to examine the
impact of disenfranchisement on particular
elections rather than the overall impact because political choices are less about average causal effects than about tipping points.

In some elections, particularly those in twoparty systems requiring a simple plurality
for victory (as in most U.S. elections), a
small number of votes are often decisive. In
this case, we also have a great deal more information at our disposal than the standard
statistical approach assumes, as we have access to population data rather than sample
data. We know the precise number of votes
cast for each candidate and the plurality or
margin of victory in every election. We also
know the exact number of prisoners, probationers, and parolees in each state who cannot vote, and we can reasonably estimate
the number of ex-felons in states that restrict their voting rights. The only real questions, then, are how many felons and ex-felons would have turned out to vote, and
which candidate they would have selected.
Assuming that nothing else about the candidates or elections would have changed, we
therefore undertake a historical accounting
of the counterfactual condition: What would
have happened had felons been allowed to
vote in U.S. Senate and presidential elections? We calculate the number of felons and
ex-felons affected, then estimate voter turnout and vote choice on the basis of their
known characteristics to determine the number of votes lost to Democratic candidates.
To assess the political consequences of disenfranchisement, we then compare the actual
margin of victory with counterfactual results
that take into account the likely political behavior of disenfranchised felons.
DATA AND METHODS
Turnout and Vote Choice

Our analyses of turnout and vote choice utilize standard election data sources. To derive
turnout estimates for the disenfranchised
population, we analyze data from the Voter

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Supplement File of the Current Population
Survey (CPS). The CPS is a monthly survey
of individuals conducted by the U.S. Census
Bureau. Since 1964, in each November of
even-numbered (national election) years, the
survey includes questions about political participation. All sampled households are asked,
“In any election some people are not able to
vote because they are sick or busy or have
some other reason, and others do not want to
vote. Did [you/another household member]
vote in the election on November __?”
Questions of this type produce slightly inflated estimates of turnout in the CPS series,
with the inflation factor ranging from a low
of 7.5 percent (1968) to a high of 11.1 percent (1988) in presidential elections between
1964 and 1996 (U.S. Bureau of the Census
1998:2). Accordingly, after obtaining estimated turnout percentages for the felon
population, we reduce them by a CPS inflation factor, multiplying predicted turnout
rates by the ratio of actual to reported turnout for each election.6 Because turnout is
most overreported among better-educated
citizens (Bernstein, Chadha, and Montjoy
2001; Silver, Anderson, and Abramson
1986), inflation rates are likely lower among
disenfranchised felons than among nonfelons, so this procedure is likely to produce
conservative estimates for our study.
Our estimates of the expected vote choice
of disenfranchised felons are developed using National Election Study (NES) data for
1972 to 2000. We begin in 1972 because it is
the first presidential election year for which
we have reasonably proximate sociodemographic information about incarcerated
felons and because it immediately precedes
major increases in incarceration rates. The
NES is the premier source of U.S. voting
data. It includes a rich battery of sociodemographic and attitudinal items and the lengthy
6

The use of proxy respondents to report on the
voting behavior of others in the household is a
potentially greater threat to validity. However,
U.S. Census Bureau verification tests show that
proxy and self-reports were in agreement about
99 percent of the time in 1984 and 98 percent of
the time in 1992 (U.S. Bureau of the Census
1986:10, 1993). Also, the CPS has produced
much more reliable turnout estimates than the
National Election Study, which typically overestimates turnout by 18 to 25 percent.

time-series needed for this investigation. The
biggest drawback of the NES series is that
while it asks respondents how they voted in
presidential and congressional elections,
there are too few respondents (N < 2,500) to
permit meaningful state-level analyses.7
To analyze the expected turnout and vote
choice of disenfranchised felons, we do not
have any survey data that asks disenfranchised felons how they would have voted.
We can, however, “match” the felon population to the rest of the voting-age population
to derive such an estimate and then test the
reasonableness of this approach with a
supplementary survey analysis. Our models
of political behavior include sociodemographic attributes that have long been shown
in voting research to contribute to turnout
and vote choice: gender, race, age, income,
labor force status, marital status, and education (Manza and Brooks 1999, chap. 7;
Teixeira 1992; Wolfinger and Rosenstone
1980). We analyze age and education (in
years) as continuous variables. Income is a
continuous variable measured in constant
1999 dollars. Labor force status, marital status, gender, and race are dichotomies (an African American–non-African American dichotomy necessitated by the lack of information about Hispanic voters in the NES series
prior to the 1980s). We use similar measures
for both the turnout analyses (using CPS
data) and vote choice analyses (using NES
data).8 Once we have estimated political participation and party preference equations on
the general population, we insert the mean
characteristics of disenfranchised felons into
these equations to obtain their predicted
7

It would be possible to obtain state-level data
for many elections, such as data collected in recent elections by the Voter News Service. Unfortunately, these surveys generally lack the battery of items needed to match the characteristics
of the felon population to those of the survey respondents, and are therefore not suitable for deriving estimates of felon voting behavior.
8 Ideally, we would also have data on partisanship, and candidate and policy preferences to develop estimates of felons’ voting behavior. Because such information is currently unavailable,
below we supplement the national analysis with
additional analyses from a longitudinal study that
allows us to more directly compare the voting behavior of felons and nonfelons.

FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT

rates of turnout and Democratic Party preference. We obtain information on the sociodemographic characteristics of convicted
felons from the Survey of State Prison Inmates data series (USDOJ 1993, 2000b).
The dependent variables in both the turnout and vote-choice analyses are dichotomous, so we estimate logistic regression
models of the probabilities of participation
and Democratic vote choice, respectively. In
the turnout equations, the outcome is coded
1 for voted, and 0 for did not vote. In the
voting equations, the outcome is coded 1 for
Democratic and 0 for Republican choice. We
consider only major party voters, as in Senate elections few third-party or independent
candidates have come close to winning office.9 Coefficients from these regressions are
reported in Appendix Table C.
Legal Status and Correctional
Populations

In addition to estimating the likelihood of
voting and the partisan alignment of felons,
we must also determine their absolute numbers in each state. To establish which correctional populations to count among the
disenfranchised population, we examined
the elector qualifications and consequences
of a felony conviction as specified in state
constitutions and statutes (Manza and Uggen
forthcoming) and referenced secondary
sources detailing the voting rights of offenders (Allard and Mauer 1999; Burton, Cullen,
and Travis 1986; Fellner and Mauer 1998;
Mauer 1997b; Olivares, Burton, and Cullen
1996; USDOJ 1996). To establish the number of disenfranchised felons currently under supervision, we sum the relevant prison,
parole, felony-probation, and convicted
felony jail populations. The data on felons
under supervision come from Justice Department publications, such as the Correctional
Populations in the United States series. We
estimate that on December 31, 2000, 3 million current felons were legally disenfranchised, or slightly less than half of the 6.5
million adults under correctional supervision
(USDOJ 2001b). For most states, this calcu9

The only independent candidate to win a Senate seat since 1972 was Harry F. Byrd Jr. of Virginia in 1976.

785

lation involves a rather straightforward accounting of the prison, parole, and felony
probation populations.10 Convicted felons
who serve their sentences in jail represent a
smaller but potentially important group not
considered in prior estimates (Mauer
1997b). In 1998, for example, 24 percent of
felony convictions resulted in jail sentences
(USDOJ 1998). We therefore include a conservative estimate of the number of convicted felons in jail—10 percent of the total
jail population.
These “head counts” are based, by social
scientific standards, on excellent data. Estimating the number of disenfranchised exfelons not currently under supervision, however, is a greater challenge. Existing estimates vary with the assumptions made by
researchers. Important early work by the
Sentencing Project (Fellner and Mauer 1998;
Mauer 1997b) based estimates on national
felony conviction data and state-level reports
of criminal offenses between 1970 and 1995.
Although valuable, such procedures may
make untenable assumptions about stability
and homogeneity, such as applying national
information on racial composition and criminal convictions to individual states. Moreover, such procedures do not account for deceased felons, nor do they consider those
convicted prior to 1970 or after 1995.
We develop alternative estimates based
on exits from (rather than entry into) correctional supervision. Our data sources include
the annual Sourcebook of Criminal Justice
Statistics and Correctional Populations series, Probation and Parole in the United
States, and Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear. For early years, we also referenced
National Prisoner Statistics, and Race of
10 Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Delaware, Alaska, and Hawaii combine their prison
and jail systems. In such cases, we classify felons serving greater than one year as prisoners and
felons with shorter sentences as jail inmates (taking 10 percent of the latter group to represent
convicted felony jail inmates). For five states that
do not distinguish felony and nonfelony probationers, we estimate that 50 percent of probationers are felons (a more conservative figure than
the 52 percent national average) (USDOJ 2001b).
Jail figures for 2000 were estimated by applying
state-specific 1999–2000 prison growth rates to
1999 jail populations.

786

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

Prisoners Admitted to State and Federal Institutions, 1926–1986 (all of these are
USDOJ publications). We determine the
median age of released prisoners based on
annual data from the National Corrections
Reporting Program (USDOJ 1983–1996).
We use recidivism data from national probability samples of prison releasees (USDOJ
1989) and probationers (USDOJ 1992) to
establish the number who reoffend. We then
compile life tables for the period 1948–
2000 to determine the number of released
felons lost to recidivism (and therefore already included in our annual head counts)
and to mortality each year (e.g., see
Bonczar and Beck 1997). Each cohort of
disenfranchised releasees is thus successively reduced each year and joined by a
new cohort of releasees. This allows us to
compute the number of ex-felons no longer
under correctional supervision for states
that disenfranchise ex-felons.
Our recidivism estimates are based on
USDOJ studies of prisoners (1989) and probationers (1992). The prisoner and parolee
recidivism rate is 18.6 percent at one year,
32.8 percent at two years, and 41.4 percent
at three years. For probationers and jail inmates, the corresponding three-year failure
rate is 36 percent. To extend the analysis to
subsequent years, we computed a trend line
based on the ratio of increases in Hoffman
and Stone-Meierhoefer’s (1980) study of
federal prisoners. By year 10, we estimate a
59.4 percent recidivism rate among former
prisoners and parolees, which increases to
65.7 percent by year 52 (the maximum duration in the analysis). Because these rates exceed those of most long-term recidivism
studies, they should yield conservative estimates of the disenfranchised ex-felon voting
base. We calculate mortality based on the
expected number of deaths for African
American males (the group with the highest
mortality rates) at the median age of release
for each state, multiplied by a constant factor of 1.46 to match the high death rates observed in the Justice Department’s recidivism study (USDOJ 1989). Age-specific and
year-specific mortality data were obtained
from the Statistical Abstract series “Expectation of Life and Expected Deaths, by Race,
Sex, and Age” (U.S. Bureau of the Census
1948–2000).

These ex-felon estimates also account for
the fact that some states restore the civil
rights of many releasees or only disenfranchise certain ex-felons. Florida, for example,
has restored voting rights to over 160,000
disenfranchised felons since the 1960s and
does not impose felony adjudication for
some probationers who successfully complete their sentences.
THE POLITICAL IMPACT OF
FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT
Turnout and Party Preference

Table 1 shows the estimated national participation rates and voting preferences for disenfranchised felons by year since 1972.
These estimates are based on the voting behavior of those matching felons in terms of
gender, race, age, income, labor force status,
marital status, and education, adjusted for
overreporting of voting in the CPS. In short,
they provide evidence regarding the likely
behavior of hypothetical felon and ex-felon
voters. Our estimates of felon turnout range
from a low of 20.5 percent (for the 1974
Congressional elections) to a high of 39 percent (for the 1992 presidential election). On
average, we predict that about 35 percent of
disenfranchised felons would have turned
out to vote in presidential elections, and that
about 24 percent would have participated in
Senate elections during nonpresidential election years. Although these numbers are well
below the corresponding rates among nonfelons, they suggest that a non-trivial proportion of disenfranchised felons were likely
to have voted if permitted to do so.
According to our analysis of party choice
in Table 1, our hypothetical felon voters
showed strong Democratic preferences in
both presidential and senatorial elections. In
recent presidential elections, even comparatively unpopular Democratic candidates,
such as George McGovern in 1972, would
have garnered almost 70 percent of the felon
vote. These Democratic preferences are less
pronounced and somewhat less stable in
senatorial elections. Nevertheless, the survey
data suggest that Democratic candidates
would have received about 7 of every 10
votes cast by the felons and ex-felons in 14
of the last 15 U.S. Senate election years. By

FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT

787

Table 1. Estimated Turnout and Voting Preferences of Disenfranchised Felons: Election Years 1972
to 2000
Presidential Elections

Senate Elections

Year

Candidate

Percent
Turnout

Percent
Democratic

Percent
Turnout

Percent
Democratic

1972
1974
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996
1998
2000

McGovern
—
Carter
—
Carter
—
Mondale
—
Dukakis
—
Clinton
—
Clinton
—
Gore

38.2
—
34.3
—
35.7
—
38.2
—
30.0
—
39.0
—
36.1
—
29.7

69.1
—
80.7
—
66.5
—
70.1
—
72.8
—
73.6
—
85.4
—
68.9

38.2
20.5
34.3
23.0
35.7
26.2
38.2
25.3
30.0
23.8
39.0
23.1
36.1
23.9
29.7

68.2
77.1
79.6
80.2
69.6
76.8
68.9
73.6
79.4
80.5
74.7
52.2
80.4
69.7
76.1

Sources: Current Population Survey, National Election Study, and Survey of Inmates of State Correctional
Facilities Series, 1974–1997 (USDOJ 2000b).

removing those with Democratic preferences
from the pool of eligible voters, felon disenfranchisement has provided a small but clear
advantage to Republican candidates in every
presidential and senatorial election from
1972 to 2000.
Impact on Individual U.S. Senate
Elections

We next use these turnout and party preference rates to gauge the impact of felon disenfranchisement on U.S. presidential and
Senate elections. We obtained information
on victory margins and Senate composition
from standard election data sources (Congressional Quarterly’s America Votes biennial series 1960–2000). Table 2 applies the
voting behavior estimates from Table 1 to
these election data and identifies seven elections that may have been overturned if disenfranchised felons had been allowed to
vote.
To determine the net Democratic votes lost
to disenfranchisement, we first multiply the
number of disenfranchised felons by their
estimated turnout rate (in each state), and the
probability of selecting the Democratic can-

didate.11 Because some felons would have
chosen Republican candidates, we then deduct from this figure the number of Republican votes lost to disenfranchisement, which
we obtain in a similar manner. For the 1978
Virginia election detailed in the top row of
Table 2, for example, we estimate that 15,343
of the state’s 93,564 disenfranchised felons
would have voted (16.4 percent). We further
estimate that 12,305 of these voters would
have selected Andrew Miller, the Democratic
candidate (80.2 percent of 15,343), and that
the remaining 19.8 percent (or 3,038) would
have chosen John Warner, the Republican
candidate. This results in a net total of 9,268
Democratic votes lost to disenfranchisement
in the 1978 U.S. Senate race in Virginia, almost double the actual Republican victory
margin of 4,721 votes.
In recent policy debates over felon disenfranchisement, restoring voting rights has
been most widely discussed for ex-felons
who have completed their sentences (Bush
2001; Sengupta 2000). Yet some analysts
have asserted that ex-felon voting restric11

We draw on the large CPS sample to derive
state-level turnout estimates for these key races.

21,776

.—

20,583

.—

31,456

State

Virginiab

Texasc

Unchanged

Unchanged

Kentucky d

Unchanged

Floridae

Wyomingf

Unchanged

Georgiag

Unchanged

Unchanged

Kentuckyh

Unchanged

1978

1978

1980

1982

1984

1986

1988

1988

1990

1992

1994

1996

1998

2000
.—

94,584

.—

.—

0

.—

6,969

206,247

.—

54,481

.—

.—

89,662

71,788

Ex-Felons

.—

126,040

.—

.—

131,911

.—

9,982

293,512

.—

75,064

.—

.—

190,369

93,564

Total

.—

25.4

.—

.—

29.6

—

24.5

26.5

.—

38.5

.—

.—

13.4

16.4

.—

69.7

.—

.—

74.7

.—

79.4

79.4

.—

68.9

.—

.—

80.2

80.2

.—

12,614

.—

.—

19,289

.—

1,438

45,735

.—

10,925

.—

.—

15,408

9,268

Net
Democratic
Turnout Percent Votes
Percent Democratic Lost

Estimated Voting Behavior

.—

6,766

.—

.—

16,237

.—

1,322

34,518

.—

5,269

.—

.—

12,227

4,721

Actual
Margin

.—

–5,848

.—

.—

–3,052

.—

–116

–11,217

.—

–5,655

.—

.—

–3,181

–4,547

—

2004+

—

—

2000

—

2006+

2000

—

2008+

—

—

2008+

2008+

Republican
CounterHeld
factual
Seat
Margin
Through

Republican Victory Margin

50:50 —

55:45-R

55:45-R

52:48-R

57:43-D

56:44-D

55:45-D

55:45-D

55:45-D

53:47-R

54:46-R

53:46-R

58:41-D

58:41-D

Actuala

51:49-D

54:46-R

54:46-R

51:49-R

60:40-D

58:42-D

58:42-D

58:42-D

56:44-D

52:48-R

52:48-R

51:48-R

60:39-D

60:39-D

55:45-D

50:50-D

51:49-D

54:46-D

63:37-D

61:39-D

60:40-D

60:40-D

58:42-D

50:50 —

52:48-R

51:48-R

60:39-D

60:39-D

Limited Cumulated
Counter- Counterfactual
factual

Senate Composition

a

Sources: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., America Votes (1978–2000); Current Population Survey (1978–2000); National Election Study (1978–2000).
Data on actual Senate composition taken from U.S. Senate (2002).
b In Virginia, J. Warner (R) defeated Miller (D) in 1978, Harrison in 1984, Spannaus in 1990, M. Warner in 1996, and Spannaus in 2002.
c In Texas, Tower (R) defeated Krueger (D) in 1978; Gramm (R) defeated Doggett in 1984, Parmer in 1990, and Morales in 1996; Cornyn defeated Kirk in 2002.
d In Kentucky, McConnell (R) defeated Huddleston (D) in 1984, Sloane in 1990, Beshear in 1996, and Weinberg in 2002.
e In Florida, Mack (R) defeated MacKay (D) in 1988, and Rodham in 1994; McCollum (R) defeated Nelson (D) in 2000.
f In Wyoming, Wallop (R) defeated Vinich (D) in 1988, and Thomas (R) defeated Sullivan in 1994.
g In Georgia, Coverdell (R) defeated Fowler (D) in 1992, and Coles in 1998. After Coverdell’s death in 2000, he was succeeded by Miller (D).
h In Kentucky, Bunning (R) defeated Baesler (D) in 1998 (Class 3 election).

.—

.—

131,911

.—

3,013

87,264

.—

.—

100,707

Current
Felons

Election
Year

Disenfranchised Population

Table 2. The Impact of Felon Disenfranchisement on U.S. Senate Elections: 1978 to 2000

788
AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT

tions are “electorally insignificant”
(Harvard Law Review 1989:1303). Is this
assumption accurate? The results in Table 2
offer a new perspective. Recall that most
states only deprive those currently under
some form of correctional supervision of the
right to vote; only 15 states additionally disenfranchise some or all ex-felons in 2000
(see Appendix Table A). In only one instance
(the late Paul Coverdell’s election in Georgia in 1992), however, was a Senate election
likely to have been overturned as a result of
the disenfranchisement of those actively under correctional supervision.12 Even in this
case, however, the number of current prisoners in Georgia (25,290) and convicted
felony jail inmates (2,163) was too small to
affect the election. Rather, it was the large
number of felony probationers (80,639, or a
full 61 percent of the state’s disenfranchised
population) and parolees (23,819, or 18 percent of disenfranchised Georgians) that
likely cost the Democrats the election. As
this case illustrates, the political impact varies with the particular correctional populations that are disenfranchised. The other reversible cases in Table 2 all include net
Democratic vote losses from ex-felon voters.
Impact on U.S. Senate Composition

Would changes to a handful of elections have
had any real impact? Since 1978, there have
been over 400 Senate elections, and we find
7 outcomes that may have been reversed if
not for the disenfranchisement of felons and
ex-felons. Yet even this small number might
have shifted the balance of power in the Senate, which has been fairly evenly divided between the two major parties over this period.
To assess this possibility, we recomputed the
U.S. Senate composition after each election.
Because two Republican seats were overturned in the 1978 elections, the Democratic
majority would have increased from 58:41 to
60:39. We followed the beneficiaries of these
closely contested elections to see how long
their seats remained under Republican control. John Warner of Virginia remains in office today, and John Tower’s Texas seat also
12

Georgia’s state constitution disenfranchised
“until the granting of pardon” until 1983, when
the constitutional ban was lifted upon “completion of this sentence.”

789

remains in Republican hands (with Phil
Gramm holding office in 2002). Although we
cannot know whether the Democratic Party
would have held these seats in subsequent
elections, the well-known advantages of incumbency make this a plausible scenario. Of
the 32 U.S. Senate elections in 1978, the incumbent party retained the seat through at
least 1990 in 29 cases (91 percent), through
at least 1996 in 27 cases (84 percent), and
through at least 2002 in 23 cases (72 percent). Because incumbent parties are unlikely
to hold such seats indefinitely, we cumulate
the counterfactual using a more reasonable
(though untested) assumption: that the
Democrats would have retained these seats
as long as the Republicans who narrowly defeated them. This procedure makes strong
ceteris paribus assumptions, however, so
Table 2 also shows “limited counterfactual”
results, which assume the victor’s party
would lose the seat immediately after a single
six-year term.
After the 1984 elections, the Republicans
held a narrow 53:47 Senate majority. Under
the cumulated counterfactual scenario in
which disenfranchised felons are calculated
to have voted, the Democrats may have
achieved parity with the Republicans. In the
Kentucky election of 1984, the Republican
candidate (Mitch McConnell) narrowly defeated the Democratic nominee by 5,269
votes. Because Kentucky disenfranchises exfelons as well as current inmates, parolees,
and felony probationers, the total number
disenfranchised was over 75,000 in 1984.
Because 1984 was a presidential election
year, turnout was relatively high, and our
voting preference model indicates that almost 70 percent of the felon voters would
have selected the Democratic candidate.
Thus, almost 11,000 Democratic votes were
likely lost to disenfranchisement in this election, more than twice the 5,269-vote Republican plurality. With the addition of this seat,
and the Virginia and Texas seats discussed
above, the counterfactual Senate composition in 1984 shows an even 50:50 party distribution.
Pursuing the counterfactual to the present
day, we find that Democratic candidates are
likely to have prevailed in Florida (1988),
Georgia (1992), and in Kentucky’s other seat
(1998) if felons had been allowed to vote,

790

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

with a narrower reversal occurring in Wyoming (1988). Without felon disenfranchisement, our cumulative counterfactual suggests that Democrats may well have controlled the Senate throughout the 1990s. Although it is possible that both parties may
have shifted course or that other factors
could have arisen to neutralize this impact,
it seems likely that the Senate deadlock after the 2000 elections would have been broken in favor of the Democrats if the ballot
had been returned to disenfranchised felons.
We discuss the implications of these shifts
in our conclusion.
Further Tests

Our counterfactual results are startling, but
subject to a number of assumptions that
might be challenged. How robust are these
results? Our estimates of disenfranchised
felon turnout are based on sociodemographic
characteristics at the time of incarceration.
For ex-felons, who represent more than onethird of the entire disenfranchised population, we are likely to understate political
participation because our sociodemographic
measures are taken at the time of incarceration. That is, they do not consider changes
in age and personal circumstances (for example, greater residential stability, labor
force attachment, and marriage) linked to
turnout. During or after completion of their
sentences, many (though certainly not all)
ex-felons acquire greater education and
more stable attachments to work, family, and
their communities (Sampson and Laub 1993)
that may conceivably increase their likelihood of voting.
Moreover, the surveyed inmate population
is generally less educated, less likely to be
married, and less likely to be employed than
the entire felon population, which also includes a large number of felony probationers who were never sent to prison. For these
reasons, we might expect felons and ex-felons to be closer to the national turnout mean
than suggested by our model, which is based
on sociodemographic characteristics at the
time of incarceration. If this were the case,
higher estimated turnout rates would increase the impact on electoral outcomes.
Finally, our estimates count only 10 percent of the total jail population among the

disenfranchised. Although jail inmates serving time for misdemeanor offenses and those
being held prior to trial are legally eligible
to vote, they lack access to a polling place,
rendering them practically—if not legally—
disenfranchised. If we had included all
621,149 jail inmates in 2000 among the disenfranchised (USDOJ 2001a), the political
impact would have been even greater.13
Nevertheless, other unmeasured characteristics of felons and ex-felons, beyond those
captured by the individual- and group-level
sociodemographic information available in
inmate surveys, could significantly depress
political participation among this group. Felons may be less cognizant of, or less willing
to accept, basic norms of citizenship and acceptable behavior than nonfelons with otherwise identical characteristics (Gottfredson
and Hirschi 1990). If so, they may be less
likely to vote than our model based solely
on sociodemographic traits would predict.
Our counterfactual analysis hinges on the
key assumption that the political behavior of
disenfranchised felons would approximate
that of nonfelons matched to them in terms
of age, race, gender, education, income, and
marital status. Although we cannot provide
a conclusive test of this assumption, we
gathered new data to examine how experiences with the criminal justice system affect
voting behavior. The Youth Development
Study is a longitudinal survey begun among
a sample of ninth graders in 1988 in St. Paul
(Minnesota) Public Schools (Mortimer
forthcoming). By 1998, when most respondents were 24 to 25 years old, approximately
23 percent had been arrested and 7 percent
had been incarcerated. We estimated logistic
regression models to see whether a bivariate
association exists between criminal justice
experiences and voting and, if so, how much
of the observed association is due to the socioeconomic and demographic characteristics that we account for in the models we
have presented above.
Table 3 shows the effects of arrest on voter
turnout and party preference (results for the
jail analysis are similar, although there are
13

Absentee ballots are not routinely available
in jails, although there have been scattered efforts
to register jail inmates in recent elections
(Mitchell 2002).

FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT

791

Table 3. Logistic Regression Predicting 1996 Voter Turnout and 1996 and 1998 Party Preference:
Youth Development Study, St. Paul, Minnesota
1996–1998
Party Preference

1996 Voter Turnout
Predictors
Criminal Sanction
Any arrest
Property arrest

Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

Model 4

–.681**
(.217)
.—

–.264
(.252)
.—

.—

.—

.—

.—

–.323
(.326)
–.341
(.342)
–1.246*
(.501)
–.065
(.372)

.148
(.353)
–.171
(.380)
–.851
(.541)
.145
(.397)

–.242
(.488)
1.274*
(.633)
–.758
(.860)
.582
(.589)

–.346
(.597)
1.599*
(.789)
.946
(1.150)
.198
(.771)

.—

–.628**
(.261)
.089
(.215)
.414**
(.063)
.036**
(.012)
–.268
(.240)
.018
(.223)

1.216*
(.517)
1.231*
(.266)
.117
(.085)
–.004
(.014)
–.390
(.313)
.130
(.293)

–.792
(.422)
–.332
(.281)
–.536**
(.102)
.001
(.016)
–.592
(.342)
.076
(.301)

–1.228
(1.281)

8.778**
(1.554)

Drug/alcohol arrest

.—

.—

Violent arrest

.—

.—

Other arrest

.—

.—

Voting Predictors
Nonwhite (vs. white)

.—

Female

.—

Years of education

.—

Income (in $1,000s)

.—

Full-time employment .—
Married

.—

–.663**
(.258)
.066
(.216)
.415**
(.063)
.036**
(.012)
–.257
(.240)
.088
(.224)

.—
.—
.—
.—
.—

Constant

.928**
(.107)

–5.429**
(.925)

.879**
(.103)

–5.452**
(.923)

Number of cases
–2 log likelihood

550
673.8**

550
599.4**

550
676.1**

550
603.4**

Clinton (D) Ventura (I)

354
373.6**

285
368.7**

Note: Numbers in parentheses are standard errors.
*p < .05
**p < .01 (two-tailed tests)

far fewer jail inmates than arrestees; tables
available on request from authors). As expected, Model 1 shows a significant bivariate relationship between arrest and turnout
in the 1996 presidential election: The odds
of voting are only about half as high for
arrestees as for nonarrestees (e–.681 = .51).
Model 2, however, shows that this effect is
reduced to nonsignificance once race, gender, education, income, employment, and
marital status are included in the full voting
behavior model. When these independent
variables are set to their mean values, the
predicted probability of voting in Model 2 is
about 63 percent for arrestees and 69 percent
for nonarrestees. It is likely that at least part

of this remaining turnout gap is attributable
to the legal disenfranchisement of arrestees
still under correctional supervision. In Minnesota, those convicted of felonies may not
vote until they are “off paper” (i.e., they have
completed probation or parole supervision in
addition to any prison sentence). Unfortunately, we cannot determine from these data
whether individual arrestees were legally eligible to vote at the time of the 1996 election.
Model 3 disaggregates the arrest data, showing that those who had been arrested for violent offenses were significantly less likely to
vote in 1996. Those convicted of violent offenses are most likely to face long sentences,
so a portion of this effect may again be due

792

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

to legal disenfranchisement. Although the
coefficient for violent arrests remains large
in magnitude in Model 4, it is again reduced
to nonsignificance when the full set of voting predictors is introduced.
The remaining models in Table 3 predict
party preferences in the 1996 presidential
and 1998 Minnesota gubernatorial elections.
Unlike the turnout models, there is some evidence that criminal justice sanctions remain
associated with party preferences, even net
of our set of voting predictors. In particular,
those arrested for drug- or alcohol-related
offenses were significantly more likely to
favor the Democratic presidential candidate
Bill Clinton in 1996 and the Independent
Party gubernatorial candidate Jesse Ventura
in 1998. Although Youth Development
Study arrestees and jail inmates may not be
representative of the U.S. felon population,
results from this Minnesota cohort of young
adults do help to establish the plausibility of
our turnout and party preference models and
our inferences regarding the political impact
of felon disenfranchisement.
Impact on Presidential Elections

Although the outcome of the extraordinarily
close 2000 presidential election could have
been altered by a large number of factors, it
would almost certainly have been reversed
had voting rights been extended to any category of disenfranchised felons. Even though
Al Gore won a plurality of the popular vote,
defeating the Republican George W. Bush by
over 500,000 votes, he lost narrowly in the
Electoral College. Had disenfranchised felons been permitted to vote, we estimate that
Gore’s margin of victory in the popular vote
would have surpassed 1 million votes, as
shown in Table 4a. Regardless of the popular
vote, however, one state—Florida—held the
balance of power. If disenfranchised felons
in Florida had been permitted to vote, Democrat Gore would certainly have carried the
state, and the election.
As Appendix Table A shows, there are
more disenfranchised felons in Florida, approximately 827,000, than in any other state.
Had they participated in the election at our
estimated rate of Florida turnout (27.2 percent) and Democratic preference (68.9 percent), Gore would have carried the state by

more than 80,000 votes. As a test on the sensitivity of these results, we halved the estimated turnout rate and consider only ex-felons in Table 4a. Under the reduced turnout
scenario, the Democratic Party’s margin of
victory is still more than 40,000 votes. More
interesting, perhaps, is the finding reported
in Table 4a that even if only ex-felons had
been enfranchised in Florida, they would
have yielded an additional 60,000 net votes
for Gore, more than enough to overwhelm
Bush’s narrow victory margin (and to reverse the outcome in the Electoral College).
And even if we halve the estimated turnout
rate, Gore’s margin of victory would have
exceeded 30,000 votes. We can thus conclude that the outcome of the 2000 presidential race hinged on the narrower question of
ex-felon disenfranchisement rather than the
broader question of voting restrictions on
felons currently under supervision.
What about earlier presidential elections?
Here we examine a much different counterfactual condition. Because a greater share of
the voting-age population is disenfranchised
now than ever before, some closely contested Democratic political victories of the
recent past might have gone to the Republicans had contemporary rates of disenfranchisement prevailed at the time. In particular, two Democratic presidential victories in
the last 40 years (1960 and 1976) were decided by very narrow margins that might
have been threatened under current levels of
incarceration and disenfranchisement.
John F. Kennedy won the 1960 presidential election by a popular vote margin of
118,550 and a 303:219 margin in the Electoral College. Had contemporary rates of
criminal punishment held at the time, however, it is likely that Richard M. Nixon would
have won the popular vote. As Appendix
Table A shows, about 4.7 million citizens, or
2.28 percent of the voting age population,
were disenfranchised in 2000 because of
felony convictions. If this percentage had
held in 1960, about 2.5 million voters would
have been disenfranchised, as shown in Table
4b (2.28 percent multiplied by the voting-age
population of 109,672,000). Because the
population percentage of convicted felons
was actually much lower in 1960 than today,
however, we estimate that only about 1.4
million were actually disenfranchised at the

FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT

793

Table 4a. Disenfranchisement Rates and the 2000 Presidential Election: What if Felons Had Been
Allowed to Vote in 2000?
Total
Disenfran
-chised

Estimated Estimated
Net
Turnout Percent Democratic
Percent Democrat Votes Lost

Counterfactual
Democratic
Margin

Unit

Actual
Republican
Margin

U.S. total

–539,947

4,695,729

29.7

68.9

527,171

1,067,118

Florida felons and ex-felons
50-percent lower turnout

537
—

827,207
—

27.2
13.6

68.9
68.9

85,050
42,525

84,513
41,988

Florida ex-felons only
50-percent lower turnout

—
—

613,514
—

27.2
13.6

68.9
68.9

63,079
31,540

62,542
31,003

Sources: Congressional Quarterly, Inc. (2000); Current Population Survey (2000); National Election Study
(2000).
Table 4b. Applying Contemporary Disenfranchisement Rates to the 1960 Presidential Election:
What if Felons Were Disenfranchised in 1960 at 2000 Rates?

Unit

CounterNet
CounterActual
Actual
factual Estimated Estimated Democratic factual
Democratic Disenfran DisenTurnout Percent
Votes Republican
Margin
-chised franchised Percent Democrat
Lost
Margin

U.S. total
118,550
50-percent lower turnout
—

1,378,156
—

2,502,211
—

40
20

75
75

224,811
112,405

106,261
–6,145

Sources: Congressional Quarterly, Inc. (1960); for state laws, Behrens, Uggen, and Manza (2002).

time of the 1960 election.14 Therefore, at current rates of disenfranchisement, over 1 million additional citizens would have been denied the vote in 1960. If 40 percent of these
new felons had voted (in an election in which
the overall turnout rate reached a post-World
War II peak of 62.8 percent), and 75 percent
of this group selected the Democratic candidate, figures in line with our findings for
other presidential elections, then Kennedy
would have lost approximately 225,000
votes—almost twice the popular vote margin
in that election. If the felon turnout rate had
been only 20 percent, we find that at current
disenfranchisement levels Kennedy would
have prevailed by only 6,000 votes. In ap14

Many states altered their disenfranchisement
regimes between 1960 and 2000 (Behrens et al.
2002; Manza and Uggen forthcoming), and the
1960 figures account for these legal changes
within the limitations of the available data.
Prison, parole, and jail information are available
for 1960, but probation figures are imputed based
on state-specific ratios of probation to other correctional populations. Ex-felon figures are based
on releases from 1948 to 1960 only, so they may
be understated relative to recent years.

plying the counterfactual to the Electoral
College, our analysis suggests that Nixon
would likely have been victorious in New
Mexico (with 4 electoral votes) but would
have lost by very narrow margins in other
states. Therefore, if current rates of disenfranchisement had held in 1960, it is likely
that Nixon may have beaten Kennedy in the
popular vote, but unlikely that he would have
surpassed his electoral vote total.
It is doubtful that applying contemporary
disenfranchisement rates would have overturned the 1976 election, although Jimmy
Carter’s victory margin would have been
considerably narrower. At current rates of
disenfranchisement, about 2.5 million additional citizens would have been denied the
vote in 1976. Our National Election Study
estimates suggest that 34.3 percent of these
would have voted and that 80.7 percent of
this group would have selected the Democratic candidate. This would have accounted for about 525,000 votes, or about
31 percent of Carter’s final 1,682,970-vote
victory margin.15
15

The National Election Study does not ask

794

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
We find that felon disenfranchisement laws,
combined with high rates of criminal punishment, may have altered the outcome of as
many as seven recent U.S. Senate elections
and at least one presidential election. One
startling implication of these findings relates
to control over the Senate. Assuming that
Democrats who might have been elected in
the absence of felon disenfranchisement had
held their seats as long as the Republicans
who narrowly defeated them, we estimate
that the Democratic Party would have gained
parity in 1984 and held majority control of
the U.S. Senate from 1986 to the present.
Changing partisan control of the Senate
would have had a number of important
policy consequences: In particular, it might
have enabled the Clinton administration to
gain approval for a much higher proportion
of its federal judicial nominees, and key
Senate committees would have shifted from
Republican to Democratic control.
In examining presidential elections, we
find that the Republican presidential victory
of 2000 would have been reversed had just
ex-felons been allowed to vote, and that the
Democratic presidential victory of 1960 may
have been jeopardized had contemporary
rates of disenfranchisement prevailed at that
time. Disenfranchised felons and ex-felons
currently make up 2.28 percent of the voting-age population, a figure that we project
may rise to 3 percent within 10 years (Manza
and Uggen forthcoming; estimates available
upon request). Because the margin of victory
in 3 of the last 10 presidential elections has
respondents how they voted in specific gubernatorial or other state elections, so we cannot model
voting behavior in state elections. We can, however, make some informed assumptions to estimate the effect of felon disenfranchisement in
gubernatorial elections. If we apply the mean rate
of turnout (24 percent) and Democratic preference (73 percent) in Senate elections to these
races, it is likely that at least three Republican
gubernatorial victories would have been overturned: in Alabama (with James Folsom [D] defeating James Forrest [R] in 1994), New Jersey
(James Florio [D] defeating Thomas Kean [R] in
1981), and Texas (John Hill [D] defeating William Clements [R] in 1978).

been 1.1 percent of the voting-age population or less, felon disenfranchisement could
be a decisive factor in future presidential
races.
One potentially important implication of
these results concerns the differing correctional populations affected by ballot restrictions. We estimate that the disenfranchised
population is composed of approximately 35
percent ex-felons, 28 percent probationers, 9
percent parolees, but only 27 percent prison
and jail inmates (Manza and Uggen forthcoming). Disenfranchisement of prisoners
alone is therefore unlikely to alter elections,
but the numbers mount when those felons
supervised in the community are added and
reach a critical mass in states that disenfranchise ex-felons. Thus, the impact of felon
disenfranchisement would have been greatly
reduced had ex-felons, probationers, and parolees been permitted to vote in all states.
Moreover, the philosophical rationale for
disenfranchisement, founded on the liberal
legal model and Enlightenment conceptions
of the social contract, would appear to be
much stronger for current prison inmates
than for those who have completed their sentences (ex-felons) or those otherwise
deemed fit to maintain community ties (probationers and parolees). Just as disenfranchisement is a powerful symbol of felons’
diminished civil rights, restoration of voting
rights provides a clear marker of reintegration and acceptance as a stakeholder in a
community of law-abiding citizens. Although the public opinion evidence is limited, our recent experimental national survey
(Manza, Brooks, and Uggen 2002) suggests
that significant majorities of survey respondents believe that an offender’s right to vote
should be restored upon release from prison.
Although these results are striking, do
they signal a true democratic contraction in
the United States? Figure 3 presents data
placing felon disenfranchisement in historical context, showing the percentages of
states holding felon disenfranchisement provisions from the late eighteenth century to
present. Most states began to restrict the ballot for felons in the mid-nineteenth century,
and there is evidence in some states that lawmakers fully appreciated the partisan consequences of their actions (Behrens et al. 2002;
Keyssar 2000; Manza and Uggen forthcom-

FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT
100

1. 14th and 15th Amendments
(1868, 1870)

Percentage of States

80

4

3

2

795

1

2. 19th Amendment (1920)
3. Civil Rights Act (1964) and
Voting Rights Act (1965)

60

4. Voter Registration Act (1993)

40

20

0 1780s 1790s 1800s 1810s 1820s 1830s 1840s 1850s 1860s1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s
1970s 1980s 1990s
No
Yes

13

16

17

22

23

23

23

21

13

7

9

7

6

6

6

6

6

6

4

4

4

2

0

0

0

1

1

3

8

12

24

31

35

38

40

42

42

42

42

44

46

46

46

48

States that disenfranchise felons

States that do not disenfranchise felons

Figure 3. The Percentage of States with Felon Disenfranchisement, 1788 to 2000
Source: Behrens, Uggen, and Manza (2002).

ing; McMillan 1955). Few states rescinded
such measures following the enfranchisement of African American males (with passage of the 14th and 15th amendments to the
U.S. Constitution) and women (with passage
of the 19th amendment). Nor was felon disenfranchisement dismantled during passage
of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Voting
Rights Act of 1965, or Voter Registration Act
of 1993. Although several states have removed voting restrictions on ex-felons since
the 1960s (including New Mexico in 2001),
most continue today to disenfranchise prisoners, probationers, and parolees. In fact, as
Figure 3 shows, a greater percentage of
states disenfranchised felons in 2000 than in
any prior year.
Today, high rates of criminal punishment,
rather than new laws, account for the political impact of felon disenfranchisement. In
light of past theory and research on the extension and universalization of suffrage,
however, the persistence and expansion of
these ballot restrictions are noteworthy. We
have shown that about 4.7 million adult U.S.
citizens do not enjoy the full complement of
political rights. As the number of disenfranchised felons expands, the electorate contracts. Because the contracted electorate now

produces different political outcomes than a
fully enfranchised one, mass incarceration
and felon disenfranchisement have clearly
impeded, and perhaps reversed, the historic
extension of voting rights. Nevertheless, we
must also note a number of caveats to these
findings. First, our counterfactual examples
rely upon a ceteris paribus assumption—that
nothing else about the candidates or elections would change save the voting rights of
felons and ex-felons. Had these laws
changed, other forces might have arisen to
negate the political influence of felons and
ex-felons. Moreover, although the Democrats lose votes to felon disenfranchisement,
they may also have gained votes by attempting to be just as punitive as Republicans.16
16

By embracing a law-and-order agenda in the
1990s, Democrats have neutralized crime as a
partisan political issue (Lin 1998). Research decomposing the unique contribution of crime
policy to individual vote choice is needed to determine whether the votes gained by such strategies outweigh the votes lost with the disenfranchisement of potential Democratic voters. We
should note, however, that returning the ballot to
felons is not necessarily inconsistent with a crime
control agenda. One may advocate extending the
franchise on public safety and reintegrative

796

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

Second, our estimated vote choice and
turnout analysis matched nonfelons to felons
on the basis of region, gender, race, age, labor force status, marital status and education. Although nonfelon voters resemble felons in many respects, we cannot be certain
that the experience of criminal conviction itself may not suppress, (or conversely, mobilize) political participation. Our analysis of
new survey data on this question provides
some reassurance that our turnout and party
preference estimates are reasonable, although the Youth Development Study results
do not constitute a conclusive test of the effects of felony convictions on political behavior. Third, our analyses have assumed
that felon disenfranchisement laws are well
enforced, and that felons and ex-felons do
not attempt to vote in disregard of these
laws. Surely some disenfranchised felons
have cast ballots, although occasional
charges of fraudulent voting have not, upon
further investigation, produced significant
evidence of illegal voting. There is also
some evidence that state authorities have
improperly purged ex-felons from the rolls,
thereby offsetting or perhaps eclipsing the
number of votes cast fraudulently (Palast
2000; cf. Stuart 2002).
Despite these important caveats, we find
considerable evidence that ballot restrictions
for felons and ex-felons have had a demonstrable impact on national elections, and in
this sense rising levels of felon disenfranchisement constitute a reversal of the universalization of the right to vote. Further, our
focus on national and state-level elections
understates the full impact of felon disenfranchisement. Because of the geographic
concentration of disenfranchised felons and
ex-felons in urban areas, it is likely that such
impact is even more pronounced in local or
district-level elections, such as House, state
legislative, and mayoral races.17 Moreover,
our analysis has only examined past elections. Unless disenfranchisement laws
grounds, arguing that ex-felons who become
stakeholders in their communities will have
lower rates of recidivism.
17 Note that in many local races, especially in
mostly black urban districts, the partisan impact
of felon disenfranchisement might be diminished
because Republican candidates are already
uncompetitive in these districts.

change, the political impact is likely to intensify in the future. Even if the numbers of
those incarcerated begin to level off (USDOJ
2001a), the number of disenfranchised exfelons will continue to rise for several years
in those states that restrict their franchise.
Although we have specified the political
consequences of felon disenfranchisement,
we have only touched on the origins of these
laws and the mass incarceration phenomenon that gives such force to them today.
These questions are important for situating
felon disenfranchisement within a broader
model of social control of dispossessed
groups. Proponents of the “new penology”
argue that the focus of criminological interest has recently shifted from the rehabilitation of individual offenders to the social
control of aggregate groups (Feeley and
Simon 1992; Wacquant 2001). The correctional population is subject to a number of
exclusions: They are often ineligible for federal grants for education (such as Pell Grants
[Page 2000]), they have restricted access to
social programs, they face sharp disadvantages in the labor market (Western and
Beckett 1999), and they must live with the
social stigma associated with a felony conviction. Restricted access to the ballot box
is but a piece of a larger pattern of social exclusion for America’s vast correctional
population.
Christopher Uggen is Associate Professor of Sociology, Life Course Center affiliate, and
McKnight Presidential Fellow at the University
of Minnesota. He studies crime, law, and deviance, with current projects involving felon voting
rights, responses to sexual harassment, and desistance from crime in the transition to adulthood.
With Jeff Manza, he is coauthor of Locked Out:
Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
Jeff Manza is Associate Professor of Sociology
and Political Science, and a Faculty Fellow at
the Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern
University. His research is in the areas of political sociology, social stratification, and public
policy. In addition to his collaborative work with
Christopher Uggen on felon disenfranchisement,
he is coauthor (with Clem Brooks) of Social
Cleavages and Political Change: Voter Alignments and U.S. Party Coalitions (Oxford University Press, 1999), which received a distinguished
book prize from the political sociology section of
the American Sociological Association.

FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT

797

APPENDIX TABLE A
Estimates of Numbers of Disenfranchised Felons by State: December 31, 2000

State

Prisoners

Alabama
26,225
Alaska
2,128
Arizona
26,510
Arkansas
11,915
California
163,001
Colorado
16,833
Connecticut
13,155
Delaware
3,937
District of Columbia 7,456
Florida
71,233
Georgia
44,232
Hawaii
3,553
Idaho
5,526
Illinois
45,281
Indiana
20,125
Iowa
7,955
Kansas
8,344
Kentucky
14,919
Louisiana
35,047
Maine
.—
Maryland
23,538
Massachusetts
.—
Michigan
47,718
Minnesota
6,238
Mississippi
20,241
Missouri
27,323
Montana
3,105
Nebraska
3,895
Nevada
10,012
New Hampshire
2,257
New Jersey
29,784
New Mexico
5,342
New York
70,198
North Carolina
31,266
North Dakota
1,076
Ohio
45,833
Oklahoma
23,181
Oregon
10,630
Pennsylvania
36,847
Rhode Island
1,966
South Carolina
21,778
South Dakota
2,616
Tennessee
22,166
Texas
157,997
Utah
5,630
Vermont
.—
Virginia
30,168
Washington
14,915
West Virginia
3,856
Wisconsin
20,612
Wyoming
1,680
Total
1,209,243

Parolees
5,494
507
3,474
9,453
117,647
5,500
1,868
579
.—
6,046
21,556
.—
1,443
.—
.—
2,763
3,829
4,909
.—
.—
14,143
.—
.—
3,072
1,596
12,357
.—
473
4,056
.—
14,899
1,670
57,858
3,352
.—
.—
1,825
.—
.—
353
4,240
.—
8,094
111,719
3,266
.—
5,148
160
1,112
9,430
514
444,405

Felony
Probation
30,887
4,543
50,897
29,048
.—
.—
29,641
10,808
.—
131,186
217,038
.—
8,774
.—
.—
9,326
.—
17,464
.—
.—
22,563
.—
.—
31,644
15,118
42,607
.—
4,828
8,410
.—
96,831
7,279
.—
34,701
.—
.—
26,385
.—
.—
15,844
25,323
.—
30,235
250,642
.—
.—
29,596
109,956
3,635
22,715
2,760
1,320,684

Sources: USDOJ; see pages 785–86 for details.

Jail
Inmates

Estimated
Ex-Felons

1,214 148,830
212
.—
1,053
58,936
.—
.—
7,714
.—
967
.—
520
.—
298
14,384
143
.—
5,228 613,514
3,451
.—
150
.—
321
.—
1,711
.—
1,333
.—
330
80,257
426
.—
1,010 109,132
2,637
.—
.—
.—
1,115
78,206
.—
.—
1,600
.—
523
.—
986
82,002
725
.—
160
.—
231
44,001
517
43,395
159
.—
1,592
.—
544
63,565
3,217
.—
1,334
.—
67
.—
1,628
.—
698
.—
677
.—
.—
.—
132
.—
869
.—
111
.—
1,934
28,720
5,609
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
1,847 243,902
1,078
32,856
272
.—
1,268
.—
99
12,797
57,710 1,654,497

Total
212,650
7,390
140,870
50,416
288,362
23,300
45,184
30,006
7,599
827,207
286,277
3,703
16,064
46,992
21,458
100,631
12,599
147,434
37,684
0
139,565
0
49,318
41,477
119,943
83,012
3,265
53,428
66,390
2,416
143,106
78,400
131,273
70,653
1,143
47,461
52,089
11,307
36,847
18,295
52,210
2,727
91,149
525,967
8,896
0
310,661
158,965
8,875
54,025
17,850
4,686,539

Percent
Voting-Age DisenPopulation franchised
3,333,000
430,000
3,625,000
1,929,000
24,873,000
3,067,000
2,499,000
582,000
411,000
11,774,000
5,893,000
909,000
921,000
8,983,000
4,448,000
2,165,000
1,983,000
2,993,000
3,255,000
968,000
3,925,000
4,749,000
7,358,000
3,547,000
2,047,000
4,105,000
668,000
1,234,000
1,390,000
911,000
6,245,000
1,263,000
13,805,000
5,797,000
477,000
8,433,000
2,531,000
2,530,000
9,155,000
753,000
2,977,000
542,000
4,221,000
14,850,000
1,465,000
460,000
5,263,000
4,368,000
1,416,000
3,930,000
358,000
205,814,000

6.38
1.72
3.89
2.61
1.16
.76
1.81
5.16
1.85
7.03
4.86
.41
1.74
.52
.48
4.65
.64
4.93
1.16
.00
3.56
.00
.67
1.17
5.86
2.02
.49
4.33
4.78
.27
2.29
6.21
.95
1.22
.24
.56
2.06
.45
.40
2.43
1.75
.50
2.16
3.54
.61
.00
5.90
3.64
.63
1.37
4.99
2.28

798

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

APPENDIX TABLE B
Estimated Numbers of Disenfranchised African American Felons by State: December 31, 2000

State

Black
Prisoners

Alabama
17,230
Alaska
317
Arizona
4,016
Arkansas
6,595
California
80,490
Colorado
4,224
Connecticut
8,302
Delaware
2,524
District of Columbia 7,382
Florida
39,427
Georgia
29,583
Hawaii
201
Idaho
105
Illinois
32,780
Indiana
8,664
Iowa
2,028
Kansas
3,218
Kentucky
5,718
Louisiana
26,820
Maine
.—
Maryland
18,228
Massachusetts
.—
Michigan
27,230
Minnesota
2,309
Mississippi
15,145
Missouri
12,489
Montana
44
Nebraska
1,155
Nevada
3,118
New Hampshire
125
New Jersey
21,301
New Mexico
621
New York
38,849
North Carolina
20,480
North Dakota
27
Ohio
24,829
Oklahoma
8,336
Oregon
1,506
Pennsylvania
23,104
Rhode Island
685
South Carolina
15,262
South Dakota
116
Tennessee
11,277
Texas
71,915
Utah
432
Vermont
.—
Virginia
20,234
Washington
3,376
West Virginia
615
Wisconsin
9,940
Wyoming
101
Total
632,474

Black
Parolees
2,674
53
543
4,715
31,457
1,639
1,175
303
.—
3,472
14,267
.—
28
.—
.—
411
1,359
1,377
.—
.—
10,662
.—
.—
1,841
1,130
4,964
.—
116
1,331
.—
8,977
199
43,638
2,114
.—
.—
614
.—
.—
100
2,949
.—
4,605
44,282
244
.—
3,323
23
218
4,476
22
199,301

Estimated
Black
Black Jail
Black
Probation Inmates Ex-Felons
13,248
585
4,347
10,376
.—
.—
8,689
5,069
.—
43,305
115,711
.—
141
.—
.—
1,019
.—
3,916
.—
.—
13,105
.—
.—
4,587
9,099
12,719
.—
758
1,853
.—
47,666
515
.—
17,448
.—
.—
6,108
.—
.—
3,598
13,950
.—
12,806
46,546
.—
.—
15,085
14,647
316
5,920
85
433,216

Sources: USDOJ; see pages 785–86 for details.

671
10
143
.—
2,697
199
250
.—
131
2,774
2,124
6
6
1,116
634
62
117
312
1,870
.—
736
.—
572
128
698
300
4
47
154
12
975
43
1,749
868
2
720
225
74
.—
35
596
3
1,125
2,130
.—
.—
1,180
205
39
469
2
26,215

77,932
.—
8,651
.—
.—
.—
.—
7,162
.—
167,413
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
7,671
.—
24,632
.—
.—
42,519
.—
.—
.—
50,035
.—
.—
7,164
11,514
.—
.—
7,750
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
11,946
.—
.—
.—
121,737
3,824
.—
.—
358
550,308

Total
111,755
966
17,700
21,686
114,644
6,063
18,417
15,058
7,513
256,392
161,685
208
280
33,895
9,297
11,192
4,694
35,955
28,690
.—
85,251
.—
27,802
8,865
76,106
30,471
48
9,240
17,970
138
78,920
9,128
84,236
40,910
29
25,549
15,283
1,580
23,104
4,419
32,756
119
41,759
164,873
676
.—
161,559
22,075
1,188
20,805
567
1,841,515

Percent
Voting-Age DisenPopulation franchised
800,000
17,000
137,000
276,000
1,853,000
132,000
221,000
108,000
230,000
1,600,000
1,577,000
27,000
7,000
1,249,000
353,000
45,000
112,000
207,000
956,000
7,000
1,058,000
270,000
977,000
106,000
675,000
425,000
4,000
49,000
105,000
9,000
856,000
37,000
2,309,000
1,173,000
4,000
895,000
185,000
51,000
820,000
36,000
816,000
5,000
635,000
1,800,000
16,000
4,000
1,005,000
154,000
45,000
193,000
4,000
24,635,000

13.97
5.68
12.92
7.86
6.19
4.59
8.33
13.94
3.27
16.02
10.25
.77
4.00
2.71
2.63
24.87
4.19
17.37
3.00
.00
8.06
.00
2.85
8.36
11.27
7.17
1.21
18.86
17.11
1.53
9.22
24.67
3.65
3.49
.72
2.85
8.26
3.10
2.82
12.27
4.01
2.37
6.58
9.16
4.23
.00
16.08
14.33
2.64
10.78
14.18
7.48

1972
1974
1976
1978
1980
1982
1984
1986
1988
1990
1992
1994
1996

1998

2000

2.553***
–.006
–.244
–.163
–.026
–.019***
–.128*
.723*
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—

2.824***
–.067***
–.039
.049
.197
–.010*
–.276***
1.817***

1.719***
–.041
–.010
.017
.218
–.015**
–.260***
1.673***

2.289**
–.026
–.184
.393
.516*
–.014*
–.319**
1.780**
1.852***
–.027
–.151
.117
–.090
–.011*
–.116
1.589**
1.392**
–.081**
.706***
–.215
.236
–.007
–.253*
1.763**

.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
1.525***
–.027
.145
–.157
–.116
.005
–.077
.482

3.066***
–.064*
–.358*
–.136
.335
.001*
–.123
.058*
1.729***
–.088*
–.028
.079
.179
–.003
–.123*
1.672*

.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
1.930***
–.041
–.076
.262
.076
–.001
–.237*
1.092

2.375***
–.015
–.151
–.070
–.001
.000
–.303***
–.716

*p

< .05

**p

< .01

***p

< .001 (two-tailed tests)

Sources: Current Population Survey (1972–2000); National Election Study (1972–2000).

Black
Years of education
Male
Married
Employed
Age
Income
Constant

Senate Vote Analysis (Voted Democratic = 1)

Black
Years of education
Male
Married
Employed
Age
Income
Constant

Presidential Vote Analysis (Voted Democratic = 1)

1.915***
–.062
–.050
–.163
–.117
–.003
.022
1.010

.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
2.049***
–.068*
–.130
–.043
.195
–.005
–.195*
1.894***

2.307***
–.004
–.162
–.021
.154
–.003
–.191*
.916*

2.052***
–.039
–.156
–.106
.082
–.002
–.134
1.352

.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—

1.946***
–.048
–.239
–.339*
–.057
.001
–.035
1.054*

2.471***
–.004
–.270*
–.439***
.078
.007
–.173**
.354

1.029***
–.023
–.513**
–.081
.110
.008
–.187*
.409

.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—

2.072***
–.030
–.349
–.569**
.076
.003
–.230*
1.475*

3.241***
–.076**
–.439***
–.223
.411*
.004
–.160*
1.423**

1.719***
–.042
–.061
.155
.291
.008
–.038
.117

.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—
.—

1.906***
–.021
–.237
–.128
.047
.001
–.115
.876

2.373***
.033
–.430**
–.217
.137
.000
–.153*
–.307

Black
–.061*
–.109*** –.063*
–.033
–.105***
.102***
.161***
.174***
.101***
.058*
–.026
.024
.211***
.263*** ..321***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
Years of education .228
.190
.245
.206
.249
.211
.232
.195
.283
.211
.256
.238
.254
.212***
.277***
*
***
**
***
***
***
***
***
***
**
***
***
Male
–.035
–.029
–.093
–.069
–.126
–.060
–.171
–.073
–.143
–.089
–.131
–.041
–.153
–.060
–.163***
Married
.392***
.517***
.443***
.532***
.528***
.538***
.460***
.541***
.604***
.498***
.418***
.538***
.486***
.535***
.550***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
Employed
.291
.331
.302
.266
.319
.283
.261
.269
.400
.260
.311
.266
.229
.221
.262***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
Age
.031
.039
.038
.041
.039
.042
.034
.041
.045
.039
.031
.042
.036
.041
.035***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
Constant
–3.753
–4.653
–4.384
–4.763
–4.464
–4.754
–4.149
–4.776
–5.615
–4.904
–4.265
–5.368
–4.750
–5.181
–4.945***

Turnout Analysis (Voted = 1)

Independent Variable

Logistic Regression Coefficients Predicting Voter Turnout and Democratic Senate and Presidential Votes: 1972 to 2000

APPENDIX TABLE C

FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT
799

800

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

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