As incarceration levels have risen in the United States, an ever-larger number of citizens have temporarily or permanently lost the right to vote. What are the political consequences of such franchise restrictions for convicted felons? To estimate expected turnout and vote choice among disfranchised felons, we combine legal sources with data series from the National Election Study, the Current Population Survey Voting Supplement, Surveys of State Prison Inmates, and National Corrections Reporting Program. To assess political impact, we examine two counterfactual conditions: (1) whether removing disfranchisement laws would have altered the composition of the U.S. Senate; and, (2) whether applying contemporary rates of disfranchisement to prior presidential elections would have affected their outcomes. Because felons are drawn disproportionately from the ranks of racial minorities and the poor, disfranchisement laws tend to take votes from Democratic candidates. Our results suggest that felon disfranchisement played a decisive role in several U.S. Senate elections, contributing to the Republican Senate majority of the early 1980s and mid-1990s. Moreover, at least one recent Democratic presidential victory would have been jeopardized had contemporary rates of disfranchisement prevailed during earlier periods.

This working paper has been published in the
American Sociological Review (2002, 67, December: 777-803).