Document Type
Research Project
Publication Date
Summer 2023
Faculty Sponsor
Zsófia Barta
Course
RPOS 496Z
Abstract
Our project is focused on why there is variation in felon disenfranchisement policy among states. After selecting five different states (New York, Mississippi, Virginia, North Carolina, and Vermont) with various policies, we tested them against our different hypotheses: demographics (age, education level, and the number of people incarcerated), partisanship, and race. We expected race to be a strong factor, meaning that as diversity of the state increased the strictness of its felon disenfranchisement policy would increase. We expected to see a similar correlation with partisanship, that the more Republican-leaning states would have stricter policies. Additionally, we believed that age, education, and prison population would have somewhat of an impact, but nothing substantial. The results were different from expectations. While race and partisanship had a slight correlation, it was not as strong as we initially expected it to be. Age and education had virtually no impact, and the prison population had very limited influence. Our results were able to provide some clues as to why such variation among states exists and should be used as a starting point for further research.
Recommended Citation
Cooper, Kylie and Elsir, Razan, "A Fault in Democracy: The Disenfranchisement of Voters" (2023). Library Award for Outstanding Undergraduate Research. 8.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/lib_award_undergrad/8
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Cooper Elsir Reflective Essay
CooperElsir_bibliography.pdf (68 kB)
Cooper Elsir Bibliography
