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89 Minn. L. Rev. 231 (2004-2005)
Voting - Not Quite a Fundamantal Right - A Look at Legal and Legislative Challenges to Felon Disfranchisement Laws

handle is hein.journals/mnlr89 and id is 247 raw text is: Note Voting-Not Quite a Fundamental Right? A Look at Legal and Legislative Challenges to Felon Disfranchisement Laws Angela Behrens* Voting is a fundamental right in the United States, yet in the 2004 presidential election, over five million people were un- able to cast a vote because of a felony conviction at some point in their lives.1 Felon disfranchisement laws remove the right to vote based on a felony conviction. While disfranchisement laws vary by state, the laws collectively account for the largest group of American citizens unable to vote.2 The existence of these laws therefore calls into question the notion of voting as a fun- damental right. The refusal of some states to extend the right to vote to persons convicted of a felony-level offense has prompted calls for reform. This Note explores both the legal and legislative challenges to state felon disfranchisement laws, questioning how the persistence of these laws squares with the notion of voting as a fundamental right. Part I first discusses briefly the progression of the right to vote toward near-universal status in the United States before giving an overview of felon disfran- chisement and the debates sparked by these laws. Part I also presents some of the unsuccessful legal challenges to felon dis- , J.D. Candidate 2005, University of Minnesota Law School; B.A. 2002, University of Minnesota. The author would like to thank Andy Pratt, David Schultz, Ryan Stai, and Chris Uggen for their helpful comments and sugges- tions. 1. Christopher Uggen et al., Estimated Disenfranchised Felon Popula- tion by State 2004 (2004) (unpublished statistics, on file with author); see also Christopher Uggen & Jeff Manza, Democratic Contraction? Political Conse- quences of Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States, 67 AM. Soc. REV. 777, 797 (2002) (using the same methodology to estimate that 4.7 million peo- ple were disfranchised for the 2000 election). 2. ALEXANDER KEYSSAR, THE RIGHT To VOTE: THE CONTESTED HISTORY OF DEMOCRACY IN THE UNITED STATES 308 (2000). Felon disfranchisement laws remove the right to vote in local, state, and federal elections.

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