Excellent Policy Brief from the Sentencing Project by authors Kristen M. Budd, Ph.D. and Vianney Gómez describes how women’s involvement in the criminal legal system profoundly affects their right to vote. In “Women Silenced at the Polls: How Criminal Convictions Deny the Right to Vote,” the authors address the fact that almost 1 million American women were recently banned from voting because they had a felony-level conviction.
THE DATA
According to the authors, almost three-quarters of a million American women are barred from voting in elections. These women, U.S. citizens, were disqualified from voting, because state laws or policies remove them from the electorate based on a single defining characteristic: a felony-level conviction. The growth in the number of women who cannot vote today is intricately linked to the growth of women’s involvement within the criminal legal system. Over the last four decades, the number of women under U.S. correctional supervision has increased by over 160% – from roughly 388,000 women in 1985 to over 1 million women in 2023.
Racial disparities in imprisonment continue to exacerbate disparities in who is banned from voting. While disparities in incarceration have decreased, Black women remain roughly twice as likely to experience imprisonment as white women, and Latina women have slightly higher imprisonment rates compared to white women.
WHY DO THE PROBLEMS PERSIST?
Apparently, over-reliance on the criminal legal system fails to address women’s needs, including mental health care, substance use treatment, and trauma-informed support. At the same time, the growing number of women within the criminal legal system has made one thing clear: a felony-level conviction strips women, the nation’s largest voting bloc, of their choices on how limited resources are allocated to these critical issues. By taking away women’s access to the ballot, these restrictions also suppress perspectives from a broad range of political affiliations and ultimately weaken the diversity of voices that are essential to a representative and functioning democracy.
IS WOMEN’S SUFFRAGE AT THE BALLOT BOX A NEW SOCIETAL PROBLEM?
According to the authors’ accurate historical accountings, the exclusion of women from the ballot box is not new. Although the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920 enshrined women’s right to vote in the U.S. Constitution, it did not end efforts to restrict women’s access to the ballot. In the U.S. Supreme Court case Leser v. Garnett (1922), Oscar Leser, a Maryland resident who opposed women’s suffrage, unsuccessfully challenged the 19th Amendment, partly on the grounds that it infringed upon state sovereignty. In a 9-0 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the 19th Amendment’s validity and guaranteed women’s right to vote would be enforced nationwide.
However, despite this monumental win for suffrage, women of color faced ongoing voter suppression tactics. Decades later, it was the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that made voting a true reality for many, but not all, women of color. Progress toward equal ballot access has been undermined by the nation’s approach to tying one’s right to vote with felony-level criminal convictions.
HOW DOES THE UNITED STATES COMPARE TO OTHER COUNTRIES?
Compared with many other nations, the United States is an outlier for its limits on the right to vote for people who have criminal convictions. Women’s accounts of having their voting rights taken away or restricted by the state are powerful examples of how felony disenfranchisement further weakens an already “flawed democracy” – a classification the United States earned based on the Democracy Index from The Economist Group.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Ultimately, racism, sexism, and class bias, along with other structural inequalities, have long influenced women’s treatment in the United States. Stripping women of their access to the ballot based on their criminal legal status further diminishes women’s political power and deepens these structural inequalities. When certain groups of American women are systematically carved out of the voting process, they lose the power to elect leaders who shape their lives and communities. The battle to protect the 19th Amendment – to keep its fundamental principles alive and well – continues so that every eligible woman, regardless of criminal legal status, can vote.
The right to vote is the foundation of American democracy. But a citizen who is convicted of a crime can lose that right. Please contact my office if you, a friend or family member are charged with a crime. Hiring an effective and competent defense attorney is the first and best step toward justice.
