Losing the Vote, produced in collaboration between Human Rights Watch and The Sentencing Project, presents the first fifty-state survey of the effect of laws taking away the right to vote from people convicted of a felony. In fourteen states even ex-offenders who have fully served their sentences and are no longer even on parole have lost their right to vote. No other democracy in the world is known to withhold the right to vote permanently from ex-offenders who have repaid their debt to society. Yet fully one in fifty American adults, 3.9 million people, have lost the right to vote because of these laws. Seventy-three percent of those who have lost their voting rights under disenfranchisement laws are not in prison, but on probation, parole, or have completed their sentences.

This denial of a basic democratic right is arbitrary and unjustified. Punishment by incarceration already removes the right to liberty, free movement, and association, as well as contact with loved ones and a host of other aspects of normal daily life. There is no compelling, rational reason for the added denial of the right to vote once the sentence has been served.

In addition, given the current disproportionate rates of arrest, conviction, and incarceration of African-Americans, the effect of disenfranchisement laws on African-American voting power is staggering. Thirteen percent of all African-American men are barred from voting because they have lost the right to vote. In nine states, the rate of African-American men who have lost the right to vote for life is between 25 and 31 percent. If current trends continue, by the next generation 40 percent of African-American men could be permanently deprived of the right to vote in the fourteen states that disenfranchise ex-offenders.

Following the report's release in October 1998, civil rights groups have been increasingly interested in disenfranchisement issues. Those groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, among others, have supported legislation to restore voting rights to those who have been disenfranchised.

In March 1999, Representative John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.)and thirty-one co-sponsors introduced the Civil Participation and Rehabilitation Act of 1999 (H.R. 906). This legislation would restore to ex-offenders the right to vote in federal elections regardless of state laws. Other legislation and litigation are being considered in Florida, Mississippi, Ohio, and Virginia.

What you can do:

* Write your Congressional representatives and urge their support for H.R. 906.