Academic

Politics, Race And Felon Disenfranchisement

By Dan Filler

The New York Times reports on the ongoing  challenge to enforce  the voting rights of Alabamians who have been convicted of crimes.   In the article, an Alabama Republican is quoted (from 2005) as opposing looser felon disenfranchisement laws on the grounds that those convicted of felonies are less likely to vote Republican.  Christopher Uggen, a sociologist at Minnesota, and Jeff Manza, a sociologist at Northwestern, published  one of the most dramatic studies of the political impact of felon disenfranchisement back in 2002.  Projecting likely voting patterns among convicted felons, they suggest that up to seven recent Senate races and one Presidential race - Bush v. Gore - would have come out differently if we did not disenfranchise felons. 

Felon disenfranchisement has an intuitive appeal - we deny the right to vote to those who breach the fundamental social contract and violate the law.  But these laws have deeply racist roots and a dramatically disparate racial impact today.  There is also a deep democratic problem with the policy; as we criminalize and prosecute more and more conduct, we passively strip more and more citizens of voting rights.   When we adopt draconian criminal justice policies, we don't notice or debate the impact of these policies on democracy and citizenship.  But activists supporting these policies surely know where their bread is buttered; if Alabama's top Republican gets it, I can't imagine that many other political experts don't see and project the impact of expanded criminal laws.

Many people have a deep discomfort with acknowledging that our criminal justice system is now doing the heavy lifting of Jim Crow laws.  With 1 in 15 black adults in prison, and millions of black adults disenfranchised, it simply will not do to argue that this broad social phenomenon is simply the aggregation of millions of bad free-will choices. 

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on March 02, 2008 (boomark / email).