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| Studies find laws on felons forbid many black men to vote |
| By New York Times |
| Published: 09/27/2004 |
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As many as one of every seven black men in Atlanta who have been convicted of a felony, and one of every four in Providence, R.I., cannot vote in this year's election, according to a pair of studies released last week. The studies, the first to look at felon disenfranchisement laws' effect on voting in individual cities, add to a growing body of evidence that those laws have a disproportionate effect on African-Americans because the percentage of black men with felony convictions is much larger than their share of the general population. The study in Atlanta concluded that two-thirds of the gap in voter registration between black males and other ethnic and gender groups was attributable to Georgia's felon disenfranchisement law. "We have the conventional wisdom that African-American males register to vote at lower rates because of political apathy," said the study's author, Ryan King of the Sentencing Project, a research and prisoners' rights group based in Washington. But the new data clearly indicate that "their registration is artificially suppressed by the disproportionate effect of their disenfranchisement." The Atlanta study also found that about a third of black men who had lost the right to vote because of a felony had been convicted of drug crimes. "This is important," Mr. King said, "because drug arrests are inherently discretionary." Other research has shown that blacks do not use drugs more than whites but are arrested on drug charges, and convicted, at a much higher rate. Interest in the effect of felon disenfranchisement laws has increased since the presidential election of 2000, when George W. Bush won Florida by only 537 votes; an estimated 600,000 people in the state, most black, were barred from voting because of felony convictions. Florida is one of nine states that permanently forbid a felon to vote, even after the prison term or time on probation or parole has been fulfilled. Neither Georgia nor Rhode Island goes that far; in both states, a felon can recover the right to vote after serving his time in prison or on probation or parole. National estimates are that five million people, roughly 2.3 percent of the electorate, will be barred from voting in November by state laws that strip felons of voting rights. The study in Providence, by the Rhode Island Family Life Center, which assists inmates returning home from prison, found that disenfranchisement was particularly concentrated in poor neighborhoods with large numbers of blacks. For example, more than 40 percent of black men in several neighborhoods in south Providence are barred from voting. The Atlanta study pointed out that such concentrations meant that more than the individual disenfranchised was affected: politicians are less likely to campaign in these neighborhoods, which are less likely to benefit from government spending. |
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