  Donate to FairVote  Felon Disenfranchisement  The right to
vote and to cast a free and secret ballot is supposed to be the
cornerstone of democracy. Yet, upwards of 5.3 million Americans
are denied the right to vote because of a past felony
conviction. In fact, felons are the only group who is banned
from voting by law. While Maine and Vermont allow all residents
to vote, even residents serving time in jail, every other state
has enacted laws that ban those serving time from voting. Two
states, Virginia and Kentucky, permanently disenfranchise people
convicted of felonies even after they have served their time.
The exclusion of lawbreakers from the political process dates
back hundreds of years. Colonial law incorporated provisions
that restricted or eliminated the rights of felons to vote.
However, today's laws that restrict voting rights owe their
history to the post-civil war reconstruction era. Southern
states in particular worried about the potential effects of
the15th amendment, which gave African Am