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266 Fighting for the Vote The Struggle against Felon and Immigrant Disenfranchisement monica w. varsanyi Casting a vote is often considered, perhaps next to military service, to be the premier act of membership in the American polity. Yet there are three groups of adults in the United States who do not have that right: citizens convicted of felony crimes, legal immigrants, and undocumented migrants. The number of adults impacted by this disenfranchisement is significant. Approximately 5.3 million adult citizens have lost the right to vote as a result of state criminal disenfranchisement laws. One-­ quarter of these individuals are currently serving prison terms for felony crimes, one-­ third are on probation or parole, and 40 percent are former felons who have fully completed their sentences and rehabilitation.1 Similarly, there are currently 11.6 million legal permanent residents—legal immigrants—living in the United States, all of whom do not have the right to vote in local, state, or federal elections.2 Finally, there are an estimated 11.2 million undocumented residents currently living in the United States.3 Barring the passage of comprehensive immigration reform by the federal government which includes a pathway to legalization, these residents —many of them living in the United States for five, ten, and even twenty years—are permanently barred from voting. While having a significant number of adults in the United States unable to vote casts a broad shadow over the nation’s commitment to universal democracy , felon and immigrant disenfranchisement also sounds a number of social justice alarms, given the disproportionate impact of disenfranchisement on people of color. With the shift since the 1970s toward a “law-­ and-­ order,” “tough on crime” society, including the expanding “war on drugs,” crime rates have been falling for several decades while rates of conviction for felony crimes Fighting for the Vote • 267 have continued to climb.4 This paradox can be explained by the increasing criminalization of drug trafficking and possession, the vast expansion of mandatory minimum sentences, the proliferation of three-­ strikes laws, harsh drug sentencing policies, and rising conviction rates. As Fellner and Mauer reported in 1998, “In California . . . more than 40,000 offenders have been sentenced under the state’s ‘three strikes’ law as of June 1998. As a result of the law, 89 percent of these offenders had their sentences doubled, and 11 percent received sentences of twenty-­ five years to life. Only one in five of these were sentenced for crimes against persons; two-­ thirds were sentenced for a nonviolent drug or property crime. Seventy percent of the sentenced offenders were either African American or Hispanic.”5 These trends have continued in the twenty-­ first century.6 Furthermore, these racial disparities cannot be explained as the result, for instance, of the illicit drug habits of African Americans and Latinos. Rather, law enforcement strategies associated with the war on drugs have targeted street-­level drug dealers and predominantly poor and minority neighborhoods.7 Even though an estimated two-­ thirds of crack users are white or Latino, the vast majority of those convicted of crack-­ related crimes—85 percent—are African American.8 These inequities are further exacerbated by highly disparate sentencing policies : the possession of and intent to distribute five hundred grams of powder cocaine carries a five-­ year sentence, while the possession of and intent to distribute only five grams of crack cocaine carries the same five-­ year mandatory sentence—on the first offense. One of the consequences, nationally, is that an estimated 13 percent of all African American men have lost the right to vote as a result of state-­ level felon disenfranchisement laws.9 While a national average of 13 percent is already significant, patterns of residential settlement and racial segregation result in considerably higher concentrations of disenfranchised individuals in certain states, cities, and neighborhoods. Florida leads the nation in the number of people permanently disenfranchised due to past felony convictions: 1.1 million people, or approximately 10 percent of the adult population. In fourteen states, one in ten African Americans is disenfranchised due to state law, and in five of these states, over 20 percent of the African American population cannot vote due to prior felony convictions.10 In the state of Georgia, one out of eight African American men has lost the right to vote due to felony convictions (one-­ third of which are drug offenses), and in Atlanta, the number creeps up to one in seven.11 Citizenship and voting are also a distant...

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