There is quite a bit of speculation going on about the 2018 midterm elections, which are now only a few hours away. Votes will be counted, and candidates will sink or swim, but on the periphery there are a few boxes that the voting public will need to check that don’t say Democrat or Republican – ballot initiatives. This election will host a variety of hot-button ballot initiatives in several states, including marijuana legalization, abortion access and funding, and various voting provisions. One such initiative is Florida Amendment 4, which if passed will restore voting rights to all convicted felons upon completion of parole or probation with the exception of felons having committed murder or felony sexual offenses. As it stands, Florida is one of four states (the other three being Iowa, Kentucky, and Virginia) that disallows felons from voting even after the completion of parole or probation periods, the only exception being for felons pardoned by the governor to restore voting rights. Laws concerning felon disenfranchisement exist on a spectrum. Florida and its peers prohibit felons from voting at all. In a few states, only certain heinous convictions yield permanent disenfranchisement. Many states allow for felons to vote only after their probation or parole is completed, and some, including California and New York, make a distinction between persons on parole and those on probation, enfranchising the latter. In a number of states, any felon released from prison has his or her voting rights restored immediately. Finally, Vermont and Maine allow prisoners to vote regardless of the crime.
So then, who are these felons who can no longer vote? To understand who they are requires an examination of the demographics of correctional institutions. Over two million adults in the United States are currently incarcerated in prisons. For the most part, felons reside in prisons, while persons convicted of misdemeanors rather than felonies reside in jail. Millions more are under correctional supervision in the form of either probation or parole. Florida alone has an estimated 1.5 million felons who have been stripped of the right to vote, whose fates rest on the outcome of the upcoming ballot initiative. These felons, for the most part, are minorities. Nationally, around forty percent of the total inmate population are black, and Hispanics are also imprisoned at rates far greater than their representation in the general population. In Florida in particular, about one in forty black men are incarcerated compared to about one in one hundred and sixty white men.
Like any piece of public policy, felony disenfranchisement laws stand to benefit certain political forces more than others. That being said, it is worthwhile to examine the laws from a moral or philosophical perspective before judging them based off of their outcomes. At the core of felony disenfranchisement is the argument that those who do not follow the law should have no say in deciding what the law ought to be – that is, through voting in representatives. This notion of responsibility is widely agreed upon. However, another justification for disenfranchisement, as argued by George Will and others, is that government officials should not be able to “fine-tune the electorate” by deciding which felons should be able to vote and when. This argument, while strong in its justification for disenfranchisement, is equally applicable on the other end of this ideological spectrum – that is, there is no way felons should be judged from amongst the whole of them and therefore all should be allowed to vote. Such arguments stand, of course, under the assumption of a reality in which the government has a compelling interest in disenfranchising felons, which is not necessarily true.
It is because of this lack of an absolutely certain compelling interest that the role of political forces must be considered when discussing the issue of felony disenfranchisement. The role of disenfranchisement in the political process seems reasonably obvious because of the overwhelming tendency of minority voters (who make up a disproportionately large portion of felons) to vote Democrat. However, there are several complicating factors that would have effects on electoral outcomes of enfranchisement. The case with Florida Amendment 4, or any similar ballot initiative or statute, is a matter of turnout. Of course, only estimates can be given for voter turnout if felons have their voting rights restored. Based off race, age, marital status, and several other indicating factors, Christopher Uggen and Jeff Manza (2002) estimated in the American Sociological Review that turnout among felons would range between roughly thirty and forty percent for both midterm and presidential elections, with between sixty-five and eighty percent of the felon vote going to Democratic candidates for elections between 1972 and 2000. Notably, Uggen and Manza further estimated that “if disenfranchised felons in Florida had been permitted to vote, (Democratic presidential candidate) Gore would certainly have carried the state, and the election.” Florida being a key state in the Electoral College in any close election, the importance of this ballot initiative seems paramount.
As it stands, the ballot initiative seems to be viewed very favorably by Florida voters. Recent polls show firm bipartisan support for the measure, with one showing eighty-eight percent of Democrats and sixty-one percent of Republicans in favor and seventy-one percent overall. It is entirely possible that if passed, Florida Amendment 4 could change the outcome of various elections, from state seats all the way up to the presidency. The amendment could have profound effects on upcoming races in Florida in the coming years, though both the governorship and a Senate seat are up for grabs during the 2018 midterms. While exact estimates for felon voting patterns are elusive, it is reasonably certain that the ballot initiative would give Democrats a significant boost in the third-most populous state in the country. Doubtless, margins have been closer in the “Sunshine State” than the number of felons whose voting rights could be restored.