The Voting Behavior of Young Disenfranchised Felons: Would They Vote if They Could?

This paper utilizes two nationally representative surveys to study the voting behavior of young adult criminals. We find significant differences in voter turnout and registration rates of criminals and noncriminals. According to the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, just 26% of ever incarcerated individuals voted in the 2004 Presidential election; these individuals were thirty-one percentage points less likely to vote than nonincarcerated individuals. Regressions of voting on arrest and incarceration and a large set of observable characteristics indicate that analyses based on data sets excluding measures of criminal history will overestimate voter turnout rates by six to nineteen percentage points.