Disenfranchisement laws prevent people with felony convictions in the United States from voting during the course of their incarceration, their parole and – in some states – for the rest of their lives. These laws have disproportionately impacted communities of color, in part as a result of the “war on drugs”.

Despite the fact that drug use and sales cut across all socio-economic and racial lines, drug enforcement occurs primarily in poor communities of color, where street-level use and sales are visible and openly targeted by law enforcement agencies. People of color are much more likely to be profiled, arrested, prosecuted, convicted and stripped of their voting rights than white people. Consequently, the political influence of their entire communities is diminished.

The United States is the only democracy in which some people who have served their sentences can still lose their right to vote. Approximately 4.7 million people in the U.S. cannot vote because of a felony conviction. An estimated 13 percent of African American men are unable to vote because of a felony conviction. That’s seven times the national average.

In the past several years, there has been a great deal of national attention focused on the impact of felon disenfranchisement laws, particularly in light of the 2000 Presidential election. Florida, a hotly disputed state in the 2000 election, is one of the states that disenfranchises felons for life.

“Right to Vote,” a campaign of civil rights organizations working on the state and national level to remove barriers to voting faced by people with felony convictions, was launched in 2003. Its members include the American Civil Liberties Union, Brennan Center for Justice, Demos, Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, National Association of the Advancement of Colored People, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, People for the American Way Foundation, and The Sentencing Project.

Thanks to extensive grassroots efforts, an increasing number of people with felony convictions are regaining their voting rights. Several states, including Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and New Mexico have reformed their voting policies. It’s clear that most people in the United States want a change: in a recent national survey, 80 percent of those polled supported the restoration of voting rights for people convicted of felonies who have completed their sentences.