Community Voices: Barriers to Voting For California's Formerly Incarcerated
Type
Policy Brief or Report
Year
2015
Level
Other Boards and Agencies
State(s)
California
Policy Areas
Civil Rights, Democracy & Governance, Economic Justice
In addition to disenfranchising people through law and policy, felony disenfranchisement laws create additional barriers to voting. The complexity of these laws and a lack of awareness about them have caused confusion and misinformation among formerly incarcerated communities as well as probation officers and the general public. Many who are actually eligible to vote do not know they are eligible and therefore refrain from voting. This report unpacks the issue of felony disenfranchisement in California by studying the issue from the community’s perspective, asking questions about the importance of voting among the formerly incarcerated, their current knowledge and awareness of who can vote, what their primary barriers are to voting and what suggestions they have for how to improve both access to voting and access to information about who can vote.