The laws that prohibit an estimated 5.85 million Americans with felony convictions from voting are one of the last remaining legal barriers to full democratic participation in our nation.
Like the antiquated laws that excluded women, people of color and the poor from the ballot box, felon disenfranchisement laws are an anti-democratic tool with a sordid history of discrimination. Today, they intersect with the profound racial disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system to keep one out of every 13 African-Americans from voting.
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