Do you think before someone commits a crime, they think to themselves, “Oh no, I won’t be able to vote if I do this!”? Because I can answer that for you: no.
The idea that disenfranchisement deters crime is not just naïve, it’s also absurd. What it really does is create a permanent underclass of people stripped of political voice, long after they’ve served their time.
The right to vote is not a privilege earned through moral purity. It’s a cornerstone of citizenship. Once a person has completed their sentence and paid their debt to society, they should be fully reintegrated into that society.
That includes voting.
We don’t bar people from getting jobs, housing, or health care forever because of a conviction – although, let’s be honest, we essentially do. Voting shouldn’t be any different.
Felon disenfranchisement laws are relics of Reconstruction-era racism. After the Civil War, Southern states weaponized them to suppress newly freed Black citizens.
Today, those same patterns remain: Black Americans are disproportionately policed, prosecuted, and imprisoned, and therefore disproportionately silenced at the ballot box. When you disenfranchise a population, you don’t just take away their political say; you rob entire communities of representation.
Look at the effects of the death penalty, disproportionately affecting people of color, still to this day.
If democracy means anything, it must mean that every citizen has a voice, not just the ones who’ve never made a mistake. Or those who have made a mistake but have been unlucky enough to get caught. Justice should rehabilitate, not exile. And a democracy that fears the votes of its own people isn’t a democracy at all.
Voting is not a reward for good behavior; it is a right. For those who say, “These people have committed crimes; they don’t deserve a vote,” the justice system is supposed to be about rehabilitation, not eternal punishment. Once people have served their sentence, the state considers their debt paid. Continuing to deny them voting rights undermines that very principle.
We don’t tell someone they can’t pay taxes after prison, so why should we tell them they can’t have a say in how those taxes are used?
If you think, “Felons will just vote irresponsibly or for soft-on-crime policies,” well, you’re assuming people with criminal records are somehow less capable of making informed choices. That’s prejudice, not logic.
People with lived experience in the justice system often become more civically engaged and motivated to reform it; this should not disenfranchise them. Denying the vote to people who understand our justice system’s failures firsthand doesn’t make democracy safer; it makes it weaker.
Or, those who say, “Restoring voting rights is too risky — what if violent offenders get to vote?” many countries already allow all prisoners to vote, including violent offenders, and their democracies haven’t collapsed. Canada, South Africa, and most of Europe have enfranchised incarcerated people without issue.
It’s about a simple truth: citizenship doesn’t vanish when someone crosses a legal line. Prison is punishment enough; civic exile is unnecessary and corrosive.
There’s an opinion that this belief is politically motivated and that Democrats just want more votes.
But this isn’t about party politics. It’s about fairness. Over 4.6 million Americans can’t vote due to felony convictions, including people of all political affiliations. The issue isn’t who they might vote for, but whether they get to.
And besides, if a political party’s success depends on preventing people from voting, perhaps that says more about the party than policy.
As of 2025, only Maine, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., allow incarcerated people to vote. Studies from the Sentencing Project and the Brennan Center indicate that restoring voting rights correlates with lower recidivism rates. People who feel part of a community are less likely to reoffend.
If we want people to rejoin society, maybe we should stop treating them like they’re permanently exiled from it.
