Felon Enfranchisement in Wisconsin

Unlock the Vote in Wisconsin!

ACLU of WI Supports Parisi Fair Election Legislation

Says it will streamline elections, save taxpayers dollars, make WI safer, and eliminate the “Crime of Voting” in Wisconsin

May 23, 2007

Milwaukee -- The Federal Government does not infringe on the rights of felony offenders to vote in any election.  That decision is left up to the states and states all over the country are taking a new look at the fairness of their democracies. WI State Representative Joe Parisi along with a long list of co-sponsors have introduced a proposal in the Wisconsin State Assembly yesterday to automatically restore probationers and parolees right to vote once released into their communities.  

The ACLU of Wisconsin supports this bill and says it will make Wisconsin a safer place to live and bring Wisconsin’s election laws more in line with those in states like Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan all states that allow felons to vote upon release. 

Felon disfranchisement runs counter to the goal of public safety.  Restricting voting rights does not prevent crime, nor does it provide compensation to victims.  In fact, disfranchising persons after release from prison is antithetical to the reentry process and harmful to long-term prospects for sustainable reintegration of ex-offenders into society.  Recent research finds a link between voting participation and re-offense; people who voted after release from supervision were half as likely to be re-arrested as those who did not vote. Similar effects were found among people with a prior arrest; 27% of non-voters were re-arrested, compared to 12% of people who had voted.

Far from making streets safer, felony disfranchisement may be detrimental to fostering public safety.  Voting demonstrates an individual’s commitment to the institutions of American democracy.  The cruel irony of felony disfranchisement is that the very behavior that society strives to encourage – the commitment to the larger social and political collective – is undermined by a policy that requires people who desire to engage in that behavior to relinquish the right to vote.

“Currently in Wisconsin, people may mistakenly vote in an election due to the poor information the DOC gives upon release.  Wisconsin citizens work, raise families and pay taxes sometimes for years and yet they could be re-incarcerated not for their original crime or even a new one, but for the crime of voting”, said Renee Crawford, Associate Director of the ACLU of Wisconsin.  “Does that seem like a fair democracy to you? Seems like taxation without representation to me and inherently unfair.”

An estimated 62,342 people with felony convictions are currently barred from voting in Wisconsin.    Only 39% of the disfranchised are in prison while 40% of disfranchised people are on probation and 21% are on parole.  

Again, one in nine African-American voters is disfranchised in Wisconsin, compared to one in fifty of all Wisconsin voters.  As a result, Wisconsin has the 11^th highest rate of African-American disfranchisement in the United States.

  African Americans comprise 39% of the disfranchised population, even though they comprise only 5% of the voting age population.The inequities in Wisconsin’s justice system compared to the rest of the nation are just beginning to be studied with no solutions on the table.

In the meantime, a policy that was popularized in the South during Reconstruction as the most effective of Jim Crow laws with the sole purpose at the time of barring African Americans from voting, is still effectively doing that in Wisconsin today. 

Representative Parisi’s bill would repeal Jim Crow in Wisconsin and at the same time bring Wisconsin’s election laws in line with most other Midwestern states.

Read the Press Release

Sources: Alec Ewald, Punishing at the Polls: The Case Against Disenfranchising Citizens With Felony Convictions, Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action (2003), available at http://www.demos-usa.org/pub109.cfm.

Uggen, Christopher & Jeff Manza (2004) “Voting and Subsequent Crime and Arrest: Evidence from a Community Sample,” Columbia Human Rights Law Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, p. 193-215.

Uggen, Christopher Jeff Manza and, Locked Out: Felon Disfranchisement and American Democracy, Oxford University Press (2006), at Table A3.3.

Uggen, Christopher Jeff Manza and, Locked Out: Felon Disfranchisement and American Democracy, Oxford University Press (2006), at Table A3.4.

Why Should Felons Vote? From Democracy’s Ghosts

This year, more than 600,000 people will be released from prison, returning to their families and their communities, many of them intent on starting over and building a better life.  

These people face many challenges in reentering the world outside the prison walls – getting a job, finding a place to live, staying out of trouble, staying away from drugs. At first, losing the right to vote seems a long way down the list of things that are important.

But as Democracy’s Ghosts shows, being an active, participating member of the community helps with rehabilitation. It helps the community by strengthening its voting base. And history shows that there’s an inequality to disfranchisement, as many of the original Jim Crow laws were intended to disfranchise African Americans, whose voter base in some states are still affected by those laws today.

Excluding ex-felons from the polls is costly, too. In states like Florida, there’s an expensive layer of bureaucracy in place just to deal with the rights restoration process.

There are those who argue that people with felony convictions shouldn't be allowed to vote because they are untrustworthy in character, raising a concern about how these people would vote. But in that case, would we exclude admitted racists or, taking that argument even further, perhaps people who don't know enough about politics?

Others argue that ex-felons would somehow vote for a pro-crime agenda. It's difficult to imagine how this would happen, and in fact it hasn't happened in states or even countries where felons can vote. In fact, disfranchisement policies are in sharp conflict with the goal of promoting public safety. A study in Minnesota showed that felons who voted in the previous biennial election had a far lower risk of committing another crime than non-voting felons, and that this effect holds net of age, race and criminal history. So, to use the words of evangelist Chuck Colson, opening up our democracy is in society’s “enlightened self-interest.”

Source:  Christopher Uggen and Jeff Manza, Voting and Subsequent Crime and Arrest: Evidence from a Community Sample, 36 Col. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 193 (2004-2005).

President George W. Bush, 2004 Presidential State of the Union

“Tonight I ask you to consider another group of Americans in need of help. This year, some 600,000 inmates will be released from prison back into society. We know from long experience that if they can't find work, or a home, or help, they are much more likely to commit crime and return to prison. So tonight, I propose a four-year, $300 million prisoner re-entry initiative to expand job training and placement services, to provide transitional housing, and to help newly released prisoners get mentoring, including from faith-based groups. America is the land of second chance, and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.” Accessible online at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040120-7.html

Consider this:

·         Though the word “felon” brings to mind the image of someone who has committed a severe crime, the threshold is often very low for what in many states is classified as a “felony” offense.  “Felony” is usually defined as a crime with a penalty of more than one year in prison. The variety of offenses that fit in this category, which can in some states result in permanent loss of voting rights, is very broad.

·     More than half of the two million people in prison or jail in the United States are incarcerated for non-violent offenses.   Nearly half of these offenders, or one quarter of the total U.S. prison and jail population, are in custody for non-violent drug crimes.  

·     In a country where voter participation is already at a dismal rate, it is irresponsible and destructive to the democratic process to create barriers to voting rights, particularly when there is no justification for protecting the public welfare and safety.

·     Other rights often also lost as a result of a felony conviction, depending on what state you live in, may include the right to apply for student loans for higher education; hold public office; live in public housing; receive welfare benefits or food stamps; and serve on a jury.

Some facts about Wisconsin's disenfranchised population:

• More than 62,000 Wisconsin residents are disfranchised.

• The majority of Wisconsin’s disfranchised population is not in prison or jail, but lives in Wisconsin’s communities, works, raises familes, goes to school, and pays taxes. Not allowing them to vote is taxation without representation and against the very core of our democracy!

• One in nine African-American voters in Wisconsin is disfranchised, compared to one in fifty of all Wisconsin voters.

• Wisconsin has more restrictive felony disfranchisement laws than 20 other states, including Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio.

Background Documents and Reports

• Wisconsin Flyer on Felon Enfranchisement (.pdf)