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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 12:50 am
Time: 12:50 am
Results for felon disenfranchisement
3 results foundAuthor: Brown-Dean, Khalilah L. Title: One Lens, Multiple Views: Felon Disenfranchisement Laws and American Political Inequality Summary: Felon disenfranchisement laws prohibit current, and in many states, former felony offenders from voting. Of particular interest to my research, 36% of the citizens permanently unable to vote are African Americans. It is important to note that state laws determine who is eligible to vote. States have the option of disenfranchising felons while in prison, while on parole, on probation, or for a lifetime. This dissertation combines traditional democratic theory with elements of the racial group competition literatures to form a lens for understanding the historical use and contemporary consequences of criminal disenfranchisement laws. Using a multi-method approach combining archival research, experiments, and cross-sectional analyses, the findings of this research contradict much of the existing literature's assertion that racial minorities have successfully overcome the institutional barriers to full participation. In essence, these findings affirm the extent to which criminal control policies have become a powerful means of promoting the politics of exclusion. Using an original state-level data set, I find that the level of minority diversity and region are the most significant determinants of the severity of states' disenfranchisement laws. In particular, I find that southern states and states with more sizeable Black and Hispanic voting-age populations tend to have more severe restrictions on felon voting. I find that elite discourse surrounding disenfranchisement has evolved from an explicit focus on race and racial discrimination to a more subtle priming of racial group considerations and stereotypes. Combining these findings with the experimental data, I find that public support for felon disenfranchisement is influenced by the frames elites use to discuss them. When disenfranchisement laws are presented as a threat to democratic vitality, citizens' support for them tends to be lower. However, when disenfranchisement is presented as a means of punishing those who have broken the public trust, support is higher. These findings confirm the importance of political elites for helping citizens make sense of complex political issues. Taken together, the research presented in this dissertation supports the view that the racial group competition lens illuminates multiple views regarding the limits of citizenship as well as contemporary barriers to political equality. Details: Columbus, OH: Ohio State University, Department of Political Science, 2003. 264p. Source: Internet Resource: Dissertation: Accessed August 24, 2011 at: http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi/BrownDean%20Khalilah%20L.pdf?osu1054744924 Year: 2003 Country: United States URL: http://etd.ohiolink.edu/view.cgi/BrownDean%20Khalilah%20L.pdf?osu1054744924 Shelf Number: 122480 Keywords: Felon DisenfranchisementFelony OffendersVoting Rights |
Author: Wood, Erika Title: De Facto Disenfranchisement Summary: Voting is both a fundamental right and a civic duty. However there remains a significant blanket barrier to the franchise: 5.3 million American citizens are not allowed to vote because of criminal convictions. As many as four million of these people live, work, and raise families in our communities, but because of convictions in their past they are still denied the right to vote. State laws vary widely on when voting rights are restored. Maine and Vermont do not deny the franchise based on a criminal conviction; even prisoners may vote there. Kentucky and Virginia are the last two states to continue to permanently disenfranchise all people with felony convictions unless they receive individual, discretionary clemency from the governor. The remaining 46 states fall somewhere in between, with the varied state laws forming a patchwork across the country. Some states restore voting rights upon release from prison, others upon completion of probation and parole, and others impose waiting periods or other contingencies and categories before restoring voting rights. This disenfranchisement by law of millions of American citizens is only half the story. Across the country there is persistent confusion among election officials about their state’s felony disenfranchisement policies. Election officials receive little or no training on these laws, and there is little or no coordination or communication between election offices and the criminal justice system. These factors, coupled with complex laws and complicated registration procedures, result in the mass dissemination of inaccurate and misleading information, which in turn leads to the de facto disenfranchisement of untold hundreds of thousands of eligible would-be voters throughout the country. De facto disenfranchisement has devastating long-term effects in communities across the country. Once a single local election official misinforms a citizen that he is not eligible to vote because of a past conviction, it is unlikely that citizen will ever follow up or make a second inquiry. Without further public education or outreach, the citizen will mistakenly believe that he is ineligible to vote for years, decades, or maybe the rest of his life. And that same citizen may pass along that same inaccurate information to his peers, family members and neighbors, creating a lasting ripple of de facto disenfranchisement across his community. Between 2003 and 2008, the ACLU and the Brennan Center for Justice, together with our state partners, conducted interviews with election officials in 15 states to determine the level of knowledge of their state’s felony disenfranchisement law. This report summarizes the results of telephone interviews conducted in Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee and Washington. Prior to conducting interviews in each state, the ACLU and the Brennan Center performed a thorough legal analysis of the state’s felony disenfranchisement law. A separate set of questions was designed for each state based on the state law and the specific information sought in the state. The same questions were asked of each election official in the state and their answers were carefully documented along with the official’s name and the date and time of the interview. Where feasible, we interviewed a representative of every local election office in each state. In states where a large number of localities made this difficult, a representative sample was identified. The interviews revealed an alarming national trend of de facto disenfranchisement: Election officials do not understand the basic voter eligibility rules governing people with criminal convictions; Election officials do not understand the basic registration procedures for people with criminal convictions; Interviewers experienced various problems communicating with election officials, including repeated unanswered telephone calls and bureaucratic runaround. Details: American Civil Liberties Union, 2008. 24p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed February 29, 2012 at http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/racialjustice/defactodisenfranchisement_report.pdf Year: 2008 Country: United States URL: http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/racialjustice/defactodisenfranchisement_report.pdf Shelf Number: 124332 Keywords: Felon DisenfranchisementFelony OffendersVoting Rights |
Author: Meredith, Marc Title: Discretionary Disenfranchisement: The Case of Legal Financial Obligations Summary: Appellate courts generally dismiss objections about tying legal financial obligations (LFOs) to the right to vote, at least in part because of the limited, anecdotal evidence available about the nature of LFO assessment and payback. We undertake a massive data collection effort to detail the type, burden, and disparate impact of criminal debt for a representative, statewide samples in Alabama. The median amount of LFOs assessed to discharged felons in Alabama across all of their criminal convictions is $3,956, more than half of which stems from court fees. People utilizing a public defender and blacks are about 15 and 9 percentage points (p.p) more likely to have an outstanding LFO balance, respectively, than people utilizing a private attorney and non-blacks. Consequentially, blacks are about 26 p.p. more likely than non-blacks to have their voting rights restoration applications denied because of outstanding LFOs. Details: Unpublished paper, 2017. 54p. Source: Internet Resource: Accessed May 15, 2018 at: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~marcmere/workingpapers/DiscretionaryLFOs.pdf Year: 2017 Country: United States URL: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~marcmere/workingpapers/DiscretionaryLFOs.pdf Shelf Number: 150188 Keywords: Criminal Justice Debt Ex-Offenders Felon Disenfranchisement Felony OffendersVoting Rights |