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.
The Politics of the Restoration of Ex-Felon Voting Rights: The Case of Iowa
We thank Jeffrey Dawson of the Iowa State Archives, and Becky Elming and Larry Johnson of the Iowa Governor’s Office for helping with data collection. We thank John Dilulio, Alec Ewald, Jacob Hacker, John Lapinski, Anna Mastri, Rogers Smith, Caroline Tolbert, Ryan Vander Wielen, Vesla Weaver, Christopher Wildeman, and audience members at MIT, Princeton University, the University of Texas, the University of Virginia, the University of Wisconsin, the 2012 State Politics and Policy Conference, the 2012 Yale American Politics Summer Workshop, the 2012 Yale Detaining Democracy Conference, and the 2013 Empirical Legal Studies Conference for useful comments and suggestions. We thank the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University as well as the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships, the Penn Humanities Forum, and the Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism, all at the University of Pennsylvania, for their financial support of this project.
Meredith M, Morse M (2015), "The Politics of the Restoration of Ex-Felon Voting Rights: The Case of Iowa". Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Vol. 10 No. 1 pp. 41–100, doi: https://doi.org/10.1561/100.00013026
Download citation file:
Sign in
ICE Member Sign In
Log inPurchased this content as a guest? Enter your email address to restore access.
