“What’s more, my work suggests that felony disfranchisement (legal restrictions on voting by people convicted of felonies) is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to voter participation. The people whose cases I studied were all facing misdemeanor, not felony, charges, which means that everyone sent to jail was still eligible to vote in the next election. These are people convicted of things like “stealing something worth less than $500,” which is not the sort of offense that we as a society have decided should result in disenfranchisement. Nevertheless, my research found spending time in jail was life-changing enough that these people became less likely to make it to the polls afterward.“
MIT News
October 28, 2019
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