UCLA
Yesterday, Nebraska's Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a law restoring voting rights to people in that state who had completed the terms of their felony sentences. This came months after the secretary of state had ordered these voting rights stripped.
These changes could tip the balance for the presidency and Congress, but they also could exacerbate the spread of fear, uncertainty and misinformation around voting eligibility and processes.
According to The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that advocates for improvements in the criminal justice system, 2 million people with felony convictions have the restored right to vote. But, according to new research, they may not know it.
UCLA sociologist Naomi Sugie and her team are analyzing in real time the voting obstacles that remain for this population while also monitoring the work of community organizations engaged in a massive get-out-the-vote effort for families impacted by felony convictions leading up to Nov. 5.
"We have been sending messages to people across seven states for the past three weeks, and people have been asking us questions about their eligibility, how to register and how to vote. People have also been expressing their partisan preferences to us, even though we remind them that we are a nonpartisan effort.
"It might be surprising to learn that people with convictions cannot be typecasted as supporting any particular party or candidate — just like the country, they have diverse experiences, preferences, and motivations to vote.
"This is a close election and every vote counts. We see this outreach effort as a way to bring in a new portion of the electorate, a group that is not on the radar of most polls, surveys and campaigns.
"Our work brings attention to the many people with felony convictions who can vote in this election, but it is also important to acknowledge that felony disenfranchisement continues to exclude large numbers of people from voting. A recent study by the Sentencing Project estimates that 4 million people remain excluded from this election."
Sugie studies the relationship between criminal legal contact and inequality across various domains, including crime, health, families, employment, welfare and voting. She uses diverse methodological approaches for data collection and analysis, and is particularly interested in understanding how mobile phones can be used as social science tools and how technology can facilitate data access, replication and transparency.
