One felon, no vote: The role of racial threat in felon disenfranchisement laws across the United States

Abstract: This thesis looks at the role played by racial threat mechanisms in the persistence of felon disenfranchisement laws across the 50 American states. The US has a long history of disenfranchising its felons, and the motivations behind implementation of these laws has been mixed. The analysis employs two main theoretical frameworks: one of racial threat as an activating mechanism of mass opinion, as well as one of elite mobilization of the white electorate through the exploitation of racial threat mechanisms, to explain the differences between states in strictness of felon disenfranchisement laws. It employs felon disenfranchisement as a type of social control, and tests it as such. The states were divided into two groups based on strictness of laws, and compared. The theories are translated into six hypotheses, which are tested in two statistical models. The analysis does not find purchase for either of the two models, however, as only one hypothesis is found to be a significant predictor for the felon disenfranchisement behavior of a state.