A Marshall Project analysis showed that only a small fraction of the thousands of people who were formerly imprisoned and whose voting rights were restored in the time allowed for the 2020 election was able to get back onto the voter rolls in four states: New Jersey, Kentucky, Iowa, and Nevada.
At least 13 states have expanded voting rights for people with felony convictions between 2016 and 2020. At least 13 US states have extended voting rights to people with felony convictions from 2016 through 2020.} As a result, millions of formerly incarcerated people across the country are now eligible to vote. millions of people who were previously in prison are now eligible to vote.
None of the states that were studied registered more than one in four eligible voters who were previously incarcerated. This is significantly lower than the general population’s registration rate, where nearly 3 out 4 eligible voters are registered in each state.
About 31,000 of 170,000 Kentucky felony convicts submitted voting applications before the last election. 8.633 of the 37,000 Nevadans released from prison over the past 10 years were registered. The state estimates that 77,000 formerly incarcerated became eligible to vote in 2019.|According to the state , 77,000 people who were formerly in prison are now eligible to vote.} Nearly 5000 of the 45,000 people affected by the Iowa lifetime ban on voting was registered. New Jersey saw 83 percent of the nearly 2,000 prisoners released in 2019 make it back on the voter rolls.
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Devyn Roberts (44), learned about the changes in voting rights after she responded to a Marshall Project survey of newly eligible voters in Kentucky. Roberts, who has not been eligible to vote most of her adult lives, hasn’t been closely following politics and wasn’t aware about Kentucky’s executive order that restored voting rights to people with felony convictions.
She said, “We are not voters.” “They should have informed us. This should have been the subject of a commercial.
Many who work to register eligible voters say that the low number of registrations for people who have been in prison previously is a sign of apathy or political alienation. Many don’t know that they have the right and privilege to vote.