Defying One-Person, One-Vote: Prisoners and the "Usual Residence" Principle

Abstract

Criminal disenfranchisement laws in forty-eight states and the District of Columbia deny the right to vote to all convicted adults in prison.' Thirty-two states also disenfranchise felons on parole; thirty disenfranchise those on probation; and thirteen bar ex-offenders who have fully served their sentences from voting for the remainder of their lives.2 In the 1974 case of Richardson v. Ramirez,3 the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of such laws. In that case, the Court held that the constitutional right to Equal Protection of the Laws4 does not require a state to permit felons to vote.5 The Court reasoned that exclusion of felons from the franchise was a historically accepted practice and may be lawful when applied equally to all felons.6 Despite the Supreme Court's definitive holding, critics of felon disenfranchisement laws have not been silenced. Several decades