Skip to content

Thursday, Jul. 23, 2020

Does a felony record prevent 1 in 13 Black Americans from voting?

Claire Zimmerman, Gigafact
yes

Widespread state limits on the voting rights of convicted felons–in a few states, even permanent bans–withhold the right to vote from nearly 7.5% of all Blacks, 1 in 13, according to 2014 estimates from the Sentencing Project. That compares with a "disenfranchisement rate" among non-Blacks of less than 2%.

In 2010, 33% of Black male adults had a felony conviction on record, up from 13% in 1980.

Florida voters in 2018 approved removing the state's stringent restrictions on voting by felons, which per the Sentencing Project disenfranchised 1.7 million people of all races, 10.4% of its voting-age population. In 2019 the state legislature voted to condition eligibility on complete restitution of any fines or costs associated with the felon's original conviction. A challenge to the constitutionality of that law is before a federal appeals court.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

About fact briefs

Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.

See all fact briefs

Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.

Learn More

Latest Fact Briefs

Be a Friend of facts

Help us fund more great fact briefs like this one.