Vote (Photo credit: Joe Shlabotnik)

by Marc Mauer and Christopher Uggen

A new Census Bureau report highlights a significant milestone in electoral participation, finding that in the 2012 election African Americans voted at a higher rate than whites for the first time. The two point black margin of 66 percent vs. 64 percent represents a sharp shift from the nearly 8 point white margin in 1996. While this shift in turnout is intriguing, it actually downplays the scale of change.

Unaccounted in the Census Bureau estimates are the 5.8 million adults who are ineligible to vote due to a current or previous felony conviction. All but two states (Maine and Vermont) take away the right to vote for a period of time after a felony conviction. In 48 states, prisoners are ineligible to vote, in 35 of these states persons also cannot vote on probation and/or parole, and in 12 states citizens may lose their voting rights even after they have completed their sentence.

Racial disparities in the criminal justice system translate into much higher rates of disenfranchisement for African Americans relative to other groups. Factoring these uncounted lost voters in to the black population produces a turnout figure up to 72 percent of the eligible adult population. The high disenfranchisement rate of black males in particular helps to explain as well the nearly nine point gender gap in black voting, considerably higher than for other groups.

While many have attributed growing black turnout to Barack Obama’s presence on the ballot in 2008 and 2012, in fact black voter turnout has been rising steadily over the past five election cycles, and is now nearly 25 percent higher than in 1996. Clearly, some combination of voter registration campaigns or heightened interest in national elections has motivated increasing numbers of African Americans to get to the polls. But the record number of disenfranchised citizens means that the politics of felony disenfranchisement will increasingly determine the composition of the electorate in coming years.

via Marc Mauer: The Missing Black Voters.