The most (unsurprisingly) ignored potential voting group: former felons

This Reuters article, headlined “U.S. felons a potentially powerful yet shunned voting bloc,” spotlights that there is one notable group of voters who have not gotten any love or attention this election season. Here are excerpts from this piece:

Felons could account for up to 10 percent of the roughly 130 million Americans expected to vote in the November 6 election, more than enough to affect the razor-thin margins that could determine the outcome.  But as in years past, neither Democrats nor Republicans are doing much to reach out to them.

“Criminals are not a popular constituency,” says James Hamm, 64, who spent 17 years in prison in Arizona for a drug-related homicide and now heads an inmate advocacy group with his wife, a retired judge.  “Politicians don’t want to say, ‘Hey, I have the backing of people who committed crimes.'”

Still, both presidential campaigns have reason to be attentive to the estimated 13.4 million felons who are eligible to vote.

Felons traditionally vote Democratic, says Christopher Uggen, a University of Minnesota sociologist, who co-authored a 2006 book, “Locked Out: Felony Disenfranchisement and American Democracy.” That is because felons come disproportionately from groups that align with Democrats, such as minorities, the poor and urban residents. In this group, Uggen says, “you aren’t going to find too many Mitt Romney supporters.”

A 2010 study that Uggen participated in found that just one in five felons who are eligible to vote actually do so, most mistakenly believing they are not.  Myriad state laws that take different approaches to restoring felons’ voting rights contribute to the confusion….

In 38 states, most felons automatically regain the right to vote once they complete their sentences, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.  Felons in others states must not only complete their sentences but wait a certain amount of time before they can again cast ballots.  In Maine and Vermont, felons never forfeit their right to vote. In Florida, Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia, felons are barred from voting unless the governor decides otherwise….

“Studies show that the recidivism rate for felons goes down significantly when they are given back their basic civil rights, including the right to vote,” said Ron Bilbao of the ACLU in Florida. “The governor went in the wrong direction.”

Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit advocacy group for criminal justice, said ex-inmates are generally ignored when it comes to voting.  “There simply isn’t a lot of encouragement for them to even register,” said Mauer.  “If we believe everyone should vote, we shouldn’t put character conditions on it.”