By Kevin B. Smith
If you gathered every American with a prison record into one contiguous territory and admitted it to the union, you would create the 12th-largest state. It would be home to at least 7 million to 8 million people and hold a dozen votes in the Electoral College.
In a close presidential race, this hypothetical state of the formerly incarcerated could decide who wins the White House.
It may sound far-fetched to conceive of former felons determining the outcome of a presidential election, not by voting but by failing to vote. But there’s a real chance they already have – not just once, but twice. That’s in addition to affecting the outcomes of some U.S. Senate and gubernatorial elections.
I am a political scientist with a long-standing interest in the question of why mass incarceration rates vary so widely across states. My 2024 book, “The Jailer’s Reckoning,” explores that question and measures its political, social and economic impacts.
One of my findings is that the sheer number of people who’ve cycled through prisons over the past 40 years is influencing election outcomes.
Scholars vigorously debate the reasons why the United States locks up more of its citizens than any other liberal democracy, or even most authoritarian regimes. Less examined are the consequences of this decades-long social experiment in mass incarceration.
The consequences, however, likely include affecting the results of close elections. Incarceration certainly plays a key role in depressing voter turnout, which lags, in no small part, because felony convictions have made so many people ineligible.
Mass incarceration has led to a fast-growing bloc of citizens who either are legally barred from voting or have just stopped bothering. Under the right circumstances, this slice of the electorate is large enough to tip an election.
Imprisonment and the franchise
Felony conviction reduces political engagement, sometimes entirely. Inmates are legally barred from voting in all but two states, Maine and Vermont. Ten states bar ex-felons from voting either permanently or for some period of time, depending on the crime, absent unusual circumstances such as a governor’s pardon.
In Idaho, Oklahoma and Texas, a criminal record means that as many as 1 in 10 citizens are ineligible to vote. Among Black Americans, that number can jump to 1 in 5.
AP Photo/Steve Karnowski
However, even when legally eligible, ex-convicts rarely exercise the right to vote. Turnout rates among this population may be as low as 10%. Contact with the criminal justice system lowers political trust, which in turn reduces the likelihood of political engagement among ex-convicts.
Although scholars debate the exact partisan tilt of this potential constituency, there’s a consensus that it is disproportionately Democratic. The upper end of estimates suggest that if this group showed up to the polls, 70% would cast ballots for Democrats.
Even estimates that are much lower sketch a picture of an alternative political world. In 2000, roughly 7% of Florida’s 11.7 million voting-age residents were disenfranchised due to past convictions. They represented about 800,000 potential voters.
If 10% of them had voted and, say, 55% voted Democratic for president, that would have translated to a 6,000-vote swing for Vice President Al Gore. In reality, Texas Gov. George W. Bush won the state – and with it the presidency – by 537 votes.
Florida Republicans Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott may have owed their initial, tight gubernatorial victories to felony disenfranchisement, since the outcomes could have been much different if former felons had the franchise.
In 2018, Florida voters did approve a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights automatically to most former felons. But a subsequent law requiring felons to pay off fines and fees has kept nearly 1 million Floridians from being able to vote, according to the Sentencing Project, a group that opposes mass incarceration.
An electorate in the shadows
Serving time behind bars or having a felony record is not a social anomaly. It is an increasingly normalized feature of American life.
The most careful scholarly estimate suggests that at least 20 million Americans have served time in prison or lived under felony supervision, or both. That’s now a conservative estimate, as it is based on 2010 data.
Given their lack of voting habits, the millions of people in this group constitute a vast shadow electorate, far larger than the roughly 2% of American citizens legally ineligible to vote due to being currently incarcerated.
These disenfranchised or absent voters are a quiet force with the potential to reshape American democracy. The statistical models in my book show that in statewide races this constituency represents roughly a 1- or 2-percentage-point swing.
That might not sound like much, and in single-party strongholds it is not. In genuinely competitive statewide elections, however, a percentage point or two can be decisive.
Consider the 2016 presidential election. That year, the Electoral College outcome was decided by Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Donald Trump won all three states by less than a percentage point. Again, the outcome could easily have been different if voting rights for former felons were a given.
Kevin B. Smith is Professor of Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
BrentJ says
If a convicted felon can BE the President, any convicted felon should be able to VOTE for President.
Sherry says
@ BrentJ. . . excellent point, and right on!
Al says
Are these really the people you want to determine an election? They have made such great decisions so far in life so let’s them screw everything up. It’s no wonder that 70% of them identify as part of the clown party. As for political science isn’t that the fall back major for those who couldn’t pass real classes? Just saying. Now think if those felons would’ve helped elect Gilliam to be governor wouldn’t life be great with a pothead in charge.
R.S. says
Right you are: Turn every jail term into a lifelong sentence! What a demented notion of justice, AI!
Skibum says
Al, you do realize you are talking about YOUR president, don’t you??? He is one of those convicted felons you are disparaging in your comment above. And yes, I agree wholeheartedly that he has in fact screwed everything up!
Congrats for finally admitting what many of us recognized way before now!
Nephew of Uncle Sam says
Yet here we are with a 34 Time Convicted Felon, known Grifter, Liable for Rape, doing everything he can to not have those tRump-Epstein Files fully released etc. etc. playing President of The United States of America.
Laurel says
So, Al, did you vote for a 34x felon for President? Logic, please!
joe says
You must be new here….asking Al for logic is hopeless.
Laurel says
No, not new. Reading maga comments is like groundhog day. No matter how many facts provided to them, they ignore them and pop up again elsewhere with the same baseless, factless comments.
Atwp says
Al is life great for those who cast their ballots for the uneducated so called leader of this country. In my life time he is the worse leader this country has had.
Laurel says
The citizens of Florida voted for the ability of felons who served their time would be eligible to vote. DeSantis went against the citizens vote, like a tyrant, and created a law that the felons needed to pay the state first. Much like a debter’s prison, politically.
I would not believe that all felons would vote democrat, considering the felons of Jan 6 were pardoned. That, and all the white collar, white pedophiles that are still free to roam, and clearly not prosecuted. Why should they be allowed to sail by and vote? Trump, the muli-felon, who did not do his time, votes. I’m pretty sure that Ghislaine Maxwell will vote Republican when she gets out of her minimum security prison, probably early.
Hypocrisy runs free in the “Free State of Florida.”
Sherry says
The Maga brainwashed keep bringing up Gilliam. . . is Fox “entertainment for the cult” doing reruns now? LOL! LOL! LOL! As “The Duke” says. . . and, what political office does Gilliam hold? Why is he relevant to any conversation. . . except for those who are completely indoctrinated into Maga demented reality, and who are capable only of regurgitating Fox’s complete BS.
Laurel says
What gets me is, they never get past any Fox Entertainment bull. Thinking stops at the end of a Fox Entertainment sentence. Now, they want to stop critical thinking in schools. I wonder why.
Jay Tomm says
You treat rights the same……
If you can get to vote after jail, then you can also get a firearm right restored. There should be no picking & choose what applies to what. Bill of right is clear.
Just happens most felons vote democrat….it’s what is is.
Skibum says
Whatever you’ve been snorting, it isn’t making your mouth spout factual, data supported information. I guess you missed the 1,000+ riotous insurrection mob of maga misfits that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Those maga republican supporters of the most corrupt president in American history beat and pummeled hundreds of police officers that day. Did you not get the memo???
On day 1 of the most corrupt, con man, sex pervert, AND convicted felon’s 2nd term in office, he blanket pardoned thousands of convicted felon maga insurrectionists. Were they all democrats? HELL NO!
Go back to school an learn something before trying to entertain by plastering complete nonsense and disinformation to people who know better, because you are doing a disservice to every single honest and ethical law enforcement officer who was targeted and harmed that day in D.C. by maga republican thugs who now get to walk free by the stroke of a pen in the tiny hands of their 34X convicted felon leader.
Sherry says
“THANK YOU! Skibum. . . Right On!
Sherry says
@ jay tomm- Just vomiting more Fox BS. . . SMH!