By Nicole D. Porter, Alison Parker, Trey Walk, Jonathan Topaz, Jennifer Turner, Casey Smith, Makayla LaRonde-King, Sabrina Pearce and Julie Ebenstein 

  The United States is an outlier nation in that it strips voting rights from millions of citizens solely on the basis of a criminal conviction.2As of 2022, over 4.4 million people in the United States were disenfranchised due to a felony conviction. This is due in part to over 50 years of U.S. mass incarceration, wherein the U.S. incarcerated population increased from about 360,000 people in the early 1970s to nearly 2 million in 2022. While many U.S. states have scaled back their disenfranchisement provisions, a trend that has accelerated since 2017, the United States still lags behind most of the world in protecting the right to vote for people with criminal convictions. The right to vote is a cornerstone of democratic, representative government that reflects the will of the people. The international consensus on the importance of this right is demonstrated in part by the fact that it is protected in international human rights law. A majority of the world’s nations either do not deny people the right to vote due to criminal convictions or deny the right only in relatively narrow and rare circumstances.  

Washington, DC: Sentencing Project, 2024. 55p.