 The Politics of the Restoration of Ex-Felon Voting Rights: The Case of IowaMeredith Marc and Morse Michael Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2015, vol. 10, issue 1, 41-100 Abstract: We investigate how the restoration of voting rights affects the political participation of ex-felons. Our primary analysis uses unique administrative data from Iowa, which changed how ex-felons restore their voting rights in both 2005 and 2011. Prior to 2005, ex-felons had to apply to the governor to restore their voting rights. We show that ex-felon turnout increased after Iowa began to automatically restore these rights. Consistent with misinformation being a significant barrier to ex-felons' political participation, ex-felons were more likely to vote if they were informed about this policy change. The application requirement was re-instated for ex-felons discharged since 2011 and we show that this reduced their 2012 presidential election turnout. We conclude by comparing the actual turnout rate of recently discharged ex-felons in Iowa, Maine, and Rhode Island to the turnout rate that Uggen and Manza's (2002) method predicts. This comparison suggests that although restoration procedures can substantively affect ex-felon turnout, restoration procedures are not the only reason why ex-felons vote less often than observably similar non-felons. Keywords: Felon disenfranchisement; Voting rights; Turnout; Registration (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:now:jlqjps:100.00013026 Access Statistics for this article More articles in Quarterly Journal of Political Science from now publishers |
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