Studies find felon disfranchisement has racial impact
The New York Times reports: 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 yesterday.
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 sentenced to prison 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." -- 2 Studies Find Laws on Felons Forbid Many Black Men to Vote **
The Sentencing Project's Atlanta report is here.