Ballot manipulation and the ‘menace of Negro domination’: Racial threat and felon disenfranchisement

Criminal offenders in the United States typically forfeit voting rights as a collateral consequence of their felony convictions. This article analyzes the origins and development of these state felon disen-franchisement provisions. Because these laws tend to dilute the vot-ing strength of racial minorities, we build on theories of group threat to test whether racial threat influenced their passage. Many felon voting bans were passed in the late 1860s and 1870s, when imple-mentation of the Fifteenth Amendment and its extension of voting rights to African-Americans were ardently contested. We find that large nonwhite prison populations increase the odds of passing re-strictive laws, and, further, that prison and state racial composition may be linked to the adoption of reenfranchisement reforms. These findings are important for understanding restrictions on the civil rights of citizens convicted of crime and, more generally, the role of racial conflict in American political development. Punishment for felony-level crimes in the United States generally carries collateral consequences, including temporary or permanent voting restric