Decoding The Right to Vote: The Role of Disenfranchisement on African American Voting in the United States

Abstract

Looking through a case study of Missouri, Iowa, and Illinois, I focus my thesis on felon disenfranchisement laws in the United States and their differences. I am mainly looking at the reasons why there are different severities of these laws by state, and whether or not race might have something to do with the varying laws. I begin my research by looking at the current felon disenfranchisement laws throughout the country, before focusing in on the three subject states, Illinois, Missouri, and Iowa, as well as the demographic information about each state in order to determine if there are racial factors impacting these laws. By looking at the policies in place in these states as well as legal cases focused on felon disenfranchisement and its unconstitutionality, I am hoping to obtain a better understanding of why many of these policies remain unchanged, and the explanations behind them, as well. In the second part of my paper, I complete a study that seeks to uncover how distinct personality traits of white American’s impact their support of these felon disenfranchisement and felon voting laws. The main purpose of this study is to see whether white Americans, with varying levels of social dominance and racial resentment, when primed with racial cues, will be more in favor of or against felon voting laws and the ways that this would potentially influence the maintenance or changing of current felon disenfranchisement laws. I aim to prove through the evidence found in research ,as well as the study, that these policies are racially motivated, as well as influenced by white Americans’ personal, as well as group based, views of African Americans.