Disenfranchisement

Disenfranchisement refers to the denial or removal of the right to vote and, more broadly, the exclusion of individuals or groups from political participation and the full rights of citizenship. It may be formal, as in property qualifications, the exclusion of women or racial minorities, and felon disenfranchisement laws, or informal, as in literacy tests, poll taxes, gerrymandering, voter identification rules, and intimidation. T. H. Marshall’s theory of citizenship treated political rights as a central element of membership, and W. E. B. Du Bois documented the exclusion of Black Americans after Reconstruction. Michelle Alexander argued that mass incarceration, along with felon disenfranchisement, functions as a racialized system of social control, and Christopher Uggen and Jeff Manza have researched the political consequences of felon voting bans. Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward examined how registration systems depress turnout among the poor, and Sidney Verba and colleagues showed that unequal resources produce unequal participation. Giorgio Agamben’s work on bare life, and Hannah Arendt’s analysis of the right to have rights, address exclusion from political community. Disenfranchisement remains central to research on democracy, race, citizenship, inequality, and electoral reform.