Advocates in Georgia face barriers getting people who were formerly incarcerated to vote

For the first time in over 10 years, Luci Harrell can vote in a presidential election.

Around the time she graduated law school this year, Harrell completed two years of parole and became legally allowed to register.

“It feels important to me...real and symbolic,” Harrell said. “For years I was required by the federal government to pay taxes and pay student loans, yet being denied the ability to vote.”

Harrell is one of an estimated 450,000 people in Georgia with past convictions who are eligible to cast ballots. As get-out-the-vote efforts ramp up across the swing state, advocates have a hard time reaching those who are formerly incarcerated, in part because many of them don't know they can vote.

“Nobody comes back and informs you that your voting rights are restored,” said Pamela Winn, an Atlanta organizer who was formerly incarcerated. “You don’t receive a letter. There’s no kind of notification. So most people, once they get a felony, in their mind all their rights are gone.”

According to a report released Thursday by The Sentencing Project, which advocates for reducing reducing imprisonment, almost 250,000 people in Georgia cannot vote because of a felony conviction, out of 4 million nationwide.

The national rate has fallen in recent years as some states expanded voting rights for people with past convictions, but Georgia has not followed suit. Most cannot vote until they have completed their prison sentences and are off probation or parole.

Fourteen other states have similar restrictions and 10 are even stricter, but Georgia has the eighth highest rate of people who cannot vote due to past convictions, something observers attribute in part to the state's unusually long prison and probation sentences.

“We have the No. 1 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. “More people per capita are either incarcerated, on probation or on parole than any other state. That’s what drives our rate of felony disenfranchisement.”

A billboard across from a federal courthouse in Atlanta shows Winn and Travis Emory Barber, who also advocates for people who have been incarcerated, standing cross-armed in orange suits alongside the words, “Formerly Incarcerated People/USE YOUR POWER TO VOTE.”

Last Sunday, the day before the state voter registration deadline, the duo set up a tent in west Atlanta to register people. Winn said her organization, IMPPACT, canvasses in areas where there are high rates of people on probation, but there is no way to target people who are eligible or will soon be eligible to vote.

Before he came by the tent, Sirvoris Sutton wasn't sure whether he could register to vote. He originally chose not to because he didn't 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.

He learned that day that he will not be able to vote for 11 years, the amount of time he has left on parole.

“It feels like another phase of incarceration again,” Sutton said. “I’m out here in free society. How could my one vote be a threat to the democratic process?”

Of the quarter-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 the case even though the state passed legislation in 2021 creating a pathway for people to terminate their probation early.

Some people with past convictions feel the government has always failed them and don’t want to vote.

For example, when Christopher Buffin of Terrell County recently left prison, he knew there was a chance he could vote. And two days before Monday's deadline, an advocate helped him register. But for now at least, he feels too frustrated to actually cast a ballot because he has not gotten his disability benefits back since leaving prison.

“In a marginalized community, voting isn’t really a priority,” Winn said, noting that people who are incarcerated are disproportionately Black and come from economically depressed communities. “The priority is survival.”

Inconsistency from state to state also adds to confusion about whether people can register, observers say.

“The U.S. is an incredibly patchwork nation when it comes to these laws,” said Sarah Shannon, a University of Georgia sociology professor who worked on The Sentencing Project’s report.

Florida has the most who are unable to vote. Voters there approved an amendment in 2018 to expand voting rights for people with past convictions, but legislation and legal rulings reimposed restrictions for those with outstanding fees. In 2022, Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, said an election police unit arrested 20 people for registering even though they had a felony conviction that made them ineligible.

And in Nebraska, the secretary of state and attorney general issued an opinion this year against two state laws that let people vote after completing their sentences.

Back in Georgia, Democratic senators introduced a bill in 2023 that would modify state law to permit people still serving time for a felony to vote as well as a resolution to remove the state’s constitutional restriction on people voting before completing their sentences. They didn't pass, however.

Such restrictions on voting rights date back to Jim Crow, after the 13th amendment outlawed slavery except as a punishment for crime. States such as Georgia added language to their constitutions that banned voting for people convicted of a felony “involving moral turpitude," a vague term that state officials say apply to all felonies.

Organizers feel the weight of this history today as Black people are incarcerated at disproportionately high rates. The Sentencing Project estimates that over half of the people who can’t vote due to past convictions in Georgia are Black. But even for those who can, getting them to vote is an ongoing battle.

“Because people are marginalized and because they have criminal background, they are led to believe that their vote doesn’t count,” Winn said.

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Kramon is a corps member for 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