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Just yesterday, the Nebraska Supreme Court ordered the state’s elections officials to let Nebraskans with past felony convictions vote.

The decision comes as a new report finds that four million Americans won’t be able to vote this year due to their felony convictions. That’s about one out of 59 adult citizens, or 1.7% of the total US voting eligible population. For African Americans, the rate is three times higher: one in 22 people of voting age is disenfranchised.

All states, except for Maine and Vermont, restrict voting rights based on criminal convictions. Half the states in the nation including Wisconsin deny voting rights to people on felony-level probation or parole. Ten states deny voting rights to some or all of the individuals even after they’ve finished out their prison, parole, or probation sentences and are “off paper.”

The report is titled Locked Out 2024: Four Million Denied Voting Rights Due to a Felony Conviction. It was released earlier this month by The Sentencing Project, a research and advocacy organization based in Washington D.C that works for a fair and effective criminal justice system.

Today on the show, host Allen Ruff speaks with Nicole D. Porter. She’s Senior Director of Advocacy at The Sentencing Project, where she focuses on state and local efforts to reform sentencing, voting rights, and confronting racial disparities in the criminal legal system. Her areas of expertise include research and grassroots support around challenging racial disparities, felony disenfranchisement, prison closures and prison reuse. You can follow her work on Twitter @nicoleporter.

The post Four Million Americans are Locked Out Of Voting appeared first on WORT-FM 89.9.