Felon Disenfranchisement: Law, History, Policy, and Politics
![handle is hein.journals/frdurb32 and id is 865 raw text is: FELON DISENFRANCHISEMENT: LAW,
HISTORY, POLICY, AND POLITICS
George Brooks*
INTRODUCTION
George W. Bush became the forty-third President of the United
States when he won the state of Florida by 537 votes in the, 2000
election.' Because the election was so close, hotly-contested, and
divisive, aspects of our electoral system long relegated to dusty
books suddenly became topics of water cooler conversation and
cocktail party chatter. Some Democrats speculate that if the nearly
600,000 felons in Florida2 had been allowed to vote, Al Gore would
have been elected President.3
Felon disenfranchisement4 has thus become a cause cel~bre
among liberals.5 There are approximately four million felons who
cannot vote nationwide.6 They are disproportionately black and
Hispanic7-constituencies that have traditionally been Democratic
strongholds.8 Embittered by the 2000 elections, Democrats have
seized on the goal of extending suffrage to felons in hopes of in-
* Dedicated to the memory of Alan El Naboulsy. I miss you terribly. The au-
thor would like to acknowledge the support and understanding of Professor Robert
Kaczorowski.
1. Gore v. Harris, 772 So.2d 1243, 1247 (Fla. 2000).
2. Johnson v. Governor of Fla., 353 F.3d 1287, 1293 (11th Cir. 2003).
3. Rebecca Perl, The Last Disenfranchised Class, THE NATION, Nov. 24, 2003, at
11, 14, available at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20031124/perl.
4. For the purposes of this note, the term felon disenfranchisement includes
any convicted felon currently incarcerated or ex-felon now on parole or probation
who cannot vote.
5. Civil rights advocates predict that voting rights for prisoners and ex-prisoners
will be the next [U.S.] suffrage movement, as lawyers, prison advocates, voting rights
groups and foundations have recently begun to join forces and take up the cause.
Perl, supra note 3, at 11.
6. One Person, No Vote: The Laws of Felon Disenfranchisement, 115 HARV. L.
REV. 1939, 1940 (2002) [hereinafter One Person, No Vote]; accord Brian Pinaire et al.,
Barred from the Vote: Public Attitudes Toward the Disenfranchisement of Felons, 30
FORDHAM URB. L.J. 1519, 1520 (2003). Some estimates for the number of disen-
franchised felons run as high as five million. See Perl, supra note 3, at 11.
7. Tanya Dugree-Pearson, Disenfranchisement-A Race Neutral Punishment for
Felony Offenders or a Way to Diminish the Minority Vote?, 23 HAMLINE J. PUB. L. &
PoL'Y 359, 364 (2002). This note focuses almost exclusively on felon disenfranchise-
ment and African-Americans because of their history of enslavement and
discrimination.
8. See Pinaire et al., supra note 6, at 1545-46.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/frdurb32&div=45&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Felon Disenfranchisement: Law, History, Policy, and Politics
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