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Voting rights for Americans with felony convictions have been at least partially restored in most states, but there are many felons who are still facing obstacles to exercising their right to vote.
There are currently 48 states where voting rights have been restored to some extent. Only Vermont, Maine, and the District of Columbia allow all people with felony convictions to vote.
In 21 states, those with felony convictions can vote after they're released from prison. In 16 other states, these individuals can vote after they complete their time in prison, parole, and/or probation. In 11 states, people with felony convictions are indefinitely disenfranchised.
As of October 2022, an estimated 4.6 million Americans were barred from voting due to felony convictions, according to the Sentencing Project. This represents about two percent of the voting-age population, disenfranchising one out of every 50 adult citizens and one out of every 19 Black Americans.
Women voters make up about one-fifth of the population that is disenfranchised by the lack of voting rights for felons, along with at least 1.7 percent of voting eligible Hispanic Americans.
However, there has been a reported decline of about 2.27 percent in the total disenfranchisement rate of incarcerated people since 2020.
Despite a historic 2018 ballot referendum in Florida that reinstated voting rights for thousands of felons who have completed their sentences, an estimated 934,500 still remain disenfranchised with 1.1 million people banned from voting because they can't afford court-ordered payments.
The laws regarding formerly incarcerated peoples' right to vote still remain unclear in Florida. In August of 2022, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis announced his new election crimes investigative unit was charging 20 individuals with voting illegally. Many of those charged said they didn't know their past felony convictions disqualified them from voting and that local officials didn't stop them from casting their ballots.
"I abide with everything they tell me to do dealing with my felony charges," Douglas Oliver, a Tampa resident who unknowingly cast an illegal ballot in the 2020 election told The Guardian in August. "I wouldn't have voted. If they said, 'No, you can't vote,' I would have said 'OK.'"
