from The Marshall Project:
This article was published in partnership with OpenNews.
As of 2020, millions of formerly incarcerated people in 13 states had recovered their right to vote. After the November general election, my co-reporter, Nicole Lewis, was curious to understand the impact formerly incarcerated voters had on the election — particularly local elections. She knew that millions of people were newly eligible to vote, but she had no idea how many had registered and how many turned out.
We both knew it wasn't going to be a straightforward request because few states actually track how many formerly incarcerated people register to vote.
We knew that we needed the voter rolls. Thankfully, Nicole was able to get the list of potentially eligible voters in some states. In states that did not have a list of eligible voters, a list of all people released from prison served as a proxy.
We found that no more than 1 in 4 formerly incarcerated voters had registered to vote in the recent election, in four key states where we were able to obtain voter registration records along with some form of release records. Compare that to the general population, where 3 in 4 eligible voters registered to vote.
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