Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper answers the following question: Under what conditions are states more likely to repeal disfranchisement provisions pertaining to the voting rights of persons convicted of a felony? We also address two broader questions: (1) Do parties seek electoral gain by changing the electoral system and voting laws? And (2) do parties override the ideological preferences of constituents in order to advance their electoral agenda? The answer to both questions is 'yes'. We find that disfranchisement provisions are more likely to be repealed under a unified Democratic state government, but that states where electoral support for Democrats is generally weak are also more likely to repeal such provisions. We find no evidence that citizen ideology effects changes in voting rights. The implications of our analysis for students of parties and voting rights are clear: Rules are changed by those who stand to benefit, and parties matter at the state level.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Some form of felon disenfranchisement has been in effect in the United States since the development of laws in the original colonies. These policies that restrict the right to vote based on criminal acts have undergone many changes since then, yet continue to create debate on their justifiability and even their constitutionality. This paper examines the history, purpose, and legal challenges to disenfranchisement. Also discussed are the current trends in state regulations and possible alterations to policy that would help ease the tension that this subject can generate.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Authors featured in Criminology & Public Policy's special issue devoted to criminal justice policy present and defend their policy propositions (Criminology & Public Policy, Volume 6, Issue 4, November 2007).

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Criminal offenders in the United States typically forfeit voting rights as collateral consequences of their felony convictions. This paper presents the first systematic analysis of the origins and development of these felon disfranchisement provisions across the states. Because such laws tend to dilute the voting strength of racial minorities, we build on theories of group threat to test whether racial threat influenced their passage. Our event history analysis shows that the rate of adoption peaked in the late 1860s and 1870s, the period when extending voting rights to African Americans was most ardently contested. Consistent with one version of the racial threat thesis, we find that large nonwhite prison populations increase the risk of passing restrictive laws, even when the effects of time, region, economic conditions, political partisanship, population, and punitiveness are statistically controlled. These findings are important for understanding restrictions on the civil rights of citizens convicted of crime, and more generally for the role of racial conflict in American political development.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper argues that in the contemporary United States, the subject generating functions of the carceral society outlined by Foucault exist outside the walls of the prison or reformatory, finding their way into the constitutional forms of self-government most notably in the practice of felon disenfranchisement. Using Foucault’s analysis of criminal justice in Discipline and Punish and Abnormal, I argue that in addition to the techniques of imprisonment, reformation, or the use of expert testimony, collateral consequences such as felon disenfranchisement are key in the formation and maintenance of the contemporary delinquent class: felons. Just as the use of psychological evidence blurs act/identity and status/conduct distinctions in a criminal trail, the practice of social and civil exclusion that comes to rest upon felons as a class shifts the focus from the individuals’ actions to their identity or status, (re)ascribing that identity in the same act that defines it. Felons are excluded from participation in self-government not for what they have done, but because of what they are, a subtle but important shift in terms of how the state operates along the boundaries of responsibility and self-rule. Felon disenfranchisement is a practice at the intersection between punishment and constitutional self-definition, between criminal and civil code, illuminating the potentially inseparable concepts of punishment, identity, and democratic citizenship.