ATLANTA– For the first time in more than a decade, Luci Harrell can vote in a presidential election.
Around the time she was graduating law school this year, Harrell completed two years of parole and was allowed to legally register.
“It feels important to me… real and symbolic,” Harrell said. “For years, I was required by the federal government to pay taxes and student loans, but was denied the ability to vote.”
Harrell is one of an estimated 450,000 people in Georgia with prior convictions who are eligible to vote. As voting efforts ramp up in swing states, advocates are struggling to reach those formerly incarcerated, in part because many of them don’t know they can vote.
“Nobody comes back and informs you that your right to vote has been restored,” said Pamela Winn, a formerly incarcerated Atlanta organizer. “You will not receive a letter. There is no notification of any kind. So most people, once they commit a crime, in their minds they have lost all their rights.”
Nearly 250,000 people in Georgia are unable to vote because of a felony, out of a total of four million nationwide, according to a report released Thursday by The Sentencing Project advocating for reducing prison sentences.
The national rate has fallen in recent years as some states have expanded voting rights to people with prior convictions, but Georgia has not followed suit. Most cannot vote until they have completed their prison sentence and are off probation or parole.
Fourteen other states have similar restrictions and 10 are even stricter, but Georgia has the eighth-highest percentage of people who cannot vote because of prior convictions, something observers attribute in part to the state’s unusually long prison and probation sentences.
“We have the highest rate of correctional control,” said Ann Colloton, policy and outreach coordinator for the Georgia Justice Project, which advocates for people in the criminal justice system. “Per capita, more people are in prison, on probation or on parole than any other state. That is why we are disenfranchised in crimes.”
A billboard across from a federal courthouse in Atlanta shows Winn and Travis Emory Barber, who also advocate for people in prison, with crossed arms in orange suits next to the words: “Formerly incarcerated people/USE YOUR POWER TO VOTE .’
Last Sunday, the day before the voter registration deadline, the duo set up a tent in West Atlanta to register people. Winn said her organization, IMPPACT, is conducting research in areas where many people are on probation, but there is no way to target people who are eligible or will soon be eligible to vote.
Before passing by the tent, Sirvoris Sutton wasn’t sure if he could register to vote. He initially chose not to do so because he did not want to be accused of voter fraud, which former President Donald Trump and his supporters have falsely said was widespread in Georgia during the 2020 election.
That day he learned that he will not be able to vote for eleven years, the time he remains on parole.
“It feels like another phase of lockdown,” Sutton said. “I am here in the free society. How can my one vote be a threat to the democratic process?”
Of the quarter of a million Georgians who cannot vote because of criminal convictions, about 190,000 are ineligible because they are on probation or parole, according to The Sentencing Project. That is also the case with the state legislation passed In 2021, an opportunity will be created for people to end their probationary period early.
Some people with previous convictions feel like the government has always failed them and don’t want to vote.
For example, when Christopher Buffin of Terrell County recently left jail, he knew there was a chance he could vote. And two days before Monday’s deadline, a lawyer helped him register. But for now, at least, he feels too frustrated to actually vote because he hasn’t gotten his disability benefits back since leaving prison.
“In a marginalized community, voting is not really a priority,” Winn said, noting that people who are incarcerated are disproportionately Black and from economically disadvantaged communities. “The priority is survival.”
Inconsistency from state to state also contributes to the confusion over whether people can register, observers say.
“The US is an incredible patchwork when it comes to these laws,” said Sarah Shannon, a professor of sociology at the University of Georgia who contributed to The Sentencing Project report.
Florida has the most people who cannot vote. Voters there approved an amendment in 2018 to expand voting rights for people with prior convictions, but legislation and legal rulings restrictions imposed again for people with outstanding costs. In 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said he would create an election police unit arrested 20 people for registration even if they had a felony conviction that made them ineligible.
And in Nebraska, the secretary of state and the attorney general issued an opinion this year against two state laws that allow people to vote after serving their sentences.
Back in Georgia, Democratic senators introduced a bill in 2023 that would change state law to allow people serving a prison sentence for a felony to vote, as well as a resolution to lift the state’s constitutional restriction on people voting before completing their have served a sentence. However, they did not pass.
Such restrictions on voting rights date back to the Jim Crow era, after the 13th Amendment banned slavery except as punishment for crime. States like Georgia language added to their constitution that banned voting for people convicted of a crime “involving moral turpitude” vague term which state officials say apply to all crimes.
Organizers feel the weight of this history today as Black people are incarcerated at disproportionately high rates. The Sentencing Project estimates that more than half of people who cannot vote because of prior convictions in Georgia are black. But even for those who can, getting them to vote is an ongoing struggle.
“Because people are marginalized and because they have criminal backgrounds, they are led to believe that their vote doesn’t count,” Winn said.
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Kramon is a staff member of The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Kramon on X: @charlottekramon
