UCLA-led team finds 2 million convicted felons have the right to vote, but they might not know it 

A study led by researchers at UCLA has found that due to voting eligibility expansions, more than 2 million people with felony convictions are now able to vote. 

Now, they are asking a critical question: Has anyone told them? 

According to data from The Sentencing Project analyzed by the coalition of researchers from UCLA, UC Irvine, UC Berkeley School of Law and Stanford University, 26 states and Washington, D.C., have expanded voting rights for those convicted of a felony since 1997. 

And while a felony conviction can mean the loss of voting rights, in many states, a person regains the right to vote after incarceration or supervision, the study said. 

“The system of mass incarceration and current and historical legacies of voter suppression have excluded millions of people,” said UCLA sociology professor Naomi Sugie. “The laws have changed, and people need to know that. This is about righting a wrong.” 

Sugie and other researchers analyzed voting obstacles during the November 2022 election and released their findings in this month’s issue of the Punishment and Society journal. Their research – conducted through interviews, focus groups and text message conversations among a multi-state sample – found that several factors pose an “access to justice issue among system-impacted people,” including a lack of understanding about the voting process, confusion about eligibility and perceived risks of voting while ineligible. 

One individual who was interviewed, a 40-year-old Hispanic woman from Texas named Delia, said that she felt the process was “very confusing on purpose.” 

“Every unit I went to, the narrative is, ‘You got a felony now, you’re never going to get a job, and you’re never going to vote,’ and so you believe that,” she told researchers. 

Another interviewee, a 41-year-old Chicano man from California named Julian, said that a lot of the times, when people come home from prison, they simply “don’t know about none of this crap” and are dissuaded from learning more for many reasons, like not being informed of their rights upon release, fear of harsh criminal penalties for simply trying to vote and overall government distrust. 

“They are just trying to be off parole, not being harassed based on that,” he said. “So, voting is just another foreign language to them, and there’s nobody educating them.” 

To help get voters to the ballot box, researchers found that community organizations – such as reentry and support networks, legal service providers, religious groups and others that work with impacted communities – made more of an effort on “cleaning up misconceptions” around voter eligibility through direct outreach. 

Researchers also concluded that limiting access to voting “limits access to justice.” 

“Disenfranchisement is a justice and equity issue…it especially takes a toll on communities disproportionately impacted by the criminal legal system, like those that are poor, racial and ethnic minorities,” Sugie said. “It’s important that our political systems make sure that their voices and concerns are heard, too.” 

Sugie and her fellow researchers are continuing to monitor voting barriers during this year’s election alongside Voter Outreach in Communities Experiencing System-Involvement (Project VOICES), which has engaged in large-scale community outreach programs.

California residents looking to check their voter eligibility can do so by visiting the California Voter Status information page.

More information can be found on the National Association of Secretaries of State Can I Vote? webpage.