While We're on the Topic of Democracy...Disenfranchisement By State

Image courtesy of CNN

The debates scheduled (?) for Friday Night September 26 brings to mind this interesting interactive map on The Sentencing Project site that has statistics, organized by state, of the number of incarcerated people, their race/ethnicity, and the total number of people disenfranchised aka unable to vote. For example, in Washington State, the total number of incarcerated is 29,225; for every 100,000 residents in Washington State, there are 393 white people incarcerated, 2,522 African-American people incarcerated, and 527 Hispanic people incarcerated. The total number of people who are disenfranchised from voting is 167,316 or 3.61% of the population...and of that number 23,364 are African-American or 27.225 percent. The numbers have probably gone up as the map was sourced from the Department of Justice and and a study entitled "Locked Out: Felony Disenfranchisement and American Democracy", by Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen a bit ago.

Beyond the cool interactive statistics map, there is a report just released titled "Expanding the Vote: State Felony Disenfranchisement Reform, 1997-2008", summarized nicely by Sentencing Law and Policy.