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Felon vote fraud
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Felon vote fraud is a type of electoral fraud. It occurs when a convicted felon who is not eligible to vote based on state laws casts a ballot. When that happens, the vote is illegal.
Voting rights for people convicted of a felony vary substantially from state to state. As of April 2025, people convicted of a felony in Maine, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. retained the right to vote while incarcerated. In 38 other states, people convicted of a felony could not vote while incarcerated but automatically regained the right to vote upon their release or at some point thereafter. Ten states did not automatically restore voting rights for people convicted of a felony.[1][2][3]
There is debate surrounding the extent to which this and other forms of voter fraud occur. John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky—with The Heritage Foundation, which describes itself as a conservative think tank—wrote that "the media aren’t doing our democracy any favors by summarily dismissing the existence of voter fraud – like the almost 1,200 proven cases in the Heritage Foundation’s election fraud database – while questioning the very need for accurate voter rolls."[4][5] According to the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy institute which describes itself as progressive, "The consensus from credible research and investigation is that the rate of illegal voting is extremely rare, and the incidence of certain types of fraud – such as impersonating another voter – is virtually nonexistent."[6][7]
This and other pages on Ballotpedia cover types of election and voter fraud for which there are documented cases and around which there is debate concerning the frequency of instances and proposed responses.
Relevant research
A sampling of research related to felon vote fraud, arranged in reverse chronological order, is presented below.
Heritage Foundation
The Heritage Foundation's Election Fraud Database categorizes felon vote fraud under "ineligible voting." Click here to view ineligible voting cases in the database.
North Carolina State Board of Elections
According to The Charlotte Observer, an audit of the 2016 election released in April 2017 by the North Carolina State Board of Elections "found 508 ineligible votes cast. About 87 percent of those (441) were felons who voted. State law prohibits felons from voting until their sentence is fully served, including probation and parole. It is believed that many of the felons who voted did not realize they could not vote while on probation."[8]
Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota
A report released in 2010 by Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota and the Minnesota Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Alliance researching cases of ineligible voting and voter fraud in the 2008 election stated, "Based on the survey results, the only type of conviction was due to felons voting (26 convictions) or felons registering to vote (12 convictions). Because about a third of people convicted did not vote, we must use 26 (the number of people who voted who were convicted) to determine the percent of the total 2008 voting population who have been convicted of fraudulent voting. Based on the survey, nine ten-thousandths of one percent (0.0009%) of 2008 voters were convicted of fraud.[9]
Brennan Center for Justice
The Brennan Center for Justice released a report in 2007 which stated the following:
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Reports of votes by persons with convictions have often fed claims of voter fraud. Yet without more information, such reports may be deceptive. Many, if not most, convictions are misdemeanors, which in most states do not affect the defendant’s voting rights. Wallace McDonald, for example, was purged from the Florida voter rolls in 2000 because of a conviction. Yet Mr. McDonald’s crime was not a felony, for which many Floridians forfeit voting rights forever — but merely a misdemeanor, which should not affect voting rights at all. Indeed, Mr. McDonald had been convicted only of falling asleep on a bench. Similarly, in Washington’s 2004 gubernatorial election, hundreds of citizens were alleged to have voted illegally because of convictions that were actually juvenile dispositions — which do not disqualify voters. Other claims of fraud rely solely on the fact that someone was convicted but never look to see whether the accused person had his voting rights restored. Even in Florida, where, until 2007, most persons with felony convictions lost their voting rights permanently, not every person convicted of a felony was ineligible to vote. Reverend Willie Dixon, 70, was purged from the Florida voter rolls in 2000 because of a felony conviction — but Reverend Dixon had already been pardoned for his crime and his voting rights had been restored. In most other states, persons with convictions regain the franchise after release from either incarceration, probation, or parole. Allegations of fraud that rely on a past criminal conviction but fail to investigate whether voting rights were restored will likely prove unfounded.[10][11] |
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The report also stated, "Many close elections have ... featured allegations that waves of ineligible people with felony convictions have deliberately overtaken the voting system. There are, however, only a handful of known cases in which people rendered ineligible by convictions cast ballots despite knowing that they were not permitted to do so. More frequently — though still quite rare — individuals who are ineligible because of convictions have reportedly registered or voted without realizing that they were ineligible."[12]
Case studies
This section provides a sample of cases related to felon vote fraud.
- In 2016, Iowan Glen Tank pleaded guilty to election misconduct under a plea deal and was fined $750. According to KCRG, Tank "lost his right to vote when he was convicted of operating while intoxicated-third offense. He says he believed his voting rights had been restored when he registered and voted at a precinct at the Waterloo police station in 2012."[13]
- In 2010, Virginian Bonnie Nicholson pleaded guilty to election fraud and forgery after "lying about her felon status on voter registration forms, allowing her to cast a vote in the 2008 election." She was sentenced to 10 years in prison, which was suspended, and she was given two years of probation.[14]
Voter list maintenance
All states have rules under which they maintain voter rolls—or, check and remove certain names from their lists of registered voters. Most states are subject to the parameters set by The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA).[15] The NVRA requires states to make efforts to remove deceased individuals and individuals who have become ineligible due to a change of address. It prohibits removing registrants from voter lists within 90 days of a federal election due to change of address unless a registrant has requested to be removed, or from removing people from voter lists solely because they have not voted. The NVRA says that states may remove names from their registration lists under certain other circumstances and that their methods for removing names must be uniform and nondiscriminatory.[16] According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, "Depending on state regulations, voters can be removed if convicted of certain crimes. ... In most states the list of voters to be removed due to a criminal conviction comes directly from the courts, the U.S. attorney, or a state agency that handles criminal data."[17]
See also
- Electoral fraud
- Election governance by state
- Voting and election governance: Support and opposition topics
- Voting rights for convicted felons
- Voter identification laws by state
- Mail ballot collection and return laws by state
- Laws permitting noncitizens to vote in the United States
Footnotes
- ↑ [http://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx National Conference of State Legislatures, "Felon Voting Rights," accessed September 18, 2024
- ↑ American Civil Liberties Union, "State Criminal Re-enfranchisement Laws," accessed September 18, 2024
- ↑ Brennan Center for Justice, "Restoring the Right to Vote by State," accessed September 18, 2024
- ↑ The Heritage Foundation, "Voter Fraud Exists – Even Though Many in the Media Claim It Doesn’t," October 29, 2018
- ↑ The Heritage Foundation, "About Heritage," accessed February 10, 2020
- ↑ The Brennan Center, "Resources on Voter Fraud Claims," June 26, 2017
- ↑ The Brennan Center, "Progressive Groups Oppose White House Prison Reform Bill," April 18, 2018
- ↑ The Charlotte Observer, "Now we finally know how bad voter fraud is in North Carolina," April 24, 2017
- ↑ Citizens for Election Integrity Minnesota, "Facts About Ineligible Voting and Voter Fraud in Minnesota," November 2010 (page 2)
- ↑ Brennan Center for Justice, "The Truth About Voter Fraud," 2007 (pages 9-10)
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Brennan Center for Justice, "The Truth About Voter Fraud," 2007 (page 16)
- ↑ KCRG, "Iowa felon who voted in 2012 election ordered to pay $750," August 26, 2016
- ↑ The Daily Progress, "Louisa woman pleads guilty to election fraud, forgery," January 22, 2010
- ↑ As of May 2024, the Justice Department notes, "Six States (Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming) are exempt from the NVRA because, on and after August 1, 1994, they either had no voter-registration requirements or had election-day voter registration at polling places with respect to elections for federal office."
- ↑ The United States Department of Justice, "The National Voter Registration Act of 1993," accessed May 29, 2024
- ↑ National Conference of State Legislatures, "Voter List Accuracy," August 22, 2019
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