The 2024 presidential and statewide elections have brought renewed attention to voting issues, particularly challenges or limitations to certain citizens’ right to vote.

For more than 4.6 million people living in the United States, the right to vote has been taken away due to a felony conviction, with some states even placing lifetime bans on the formerly incarcerated.

In Massachusetts, a new bill sponsored by state Sen. Liz Miranda and state Rep. Erica Uyterhoeven would allow prisoners with felony convictions to be able to vote. The bill reverses a 2000 constitutional amendment which eliminated voting rights from people with felony convictions in state and local elections. In Massachusetts, anyone with a felony offense is not allowed to vote until they are released from prison.

Miranda said this is more than just a civil rights issue, but also a disproportionately racial one.

“I think we need to look at our population,” Miranda said. “Black and brown people make about 20 percent [of the state population], but they’re close to almost 60 percent of the state’s population of those that are incarcerated.”

The issue is also personal to Miranda, who has had family members who were incarcerated.

“This is a matter of political will for me,” she said. “This is about humanity.”

For Katie Talbot, this issue hits even closer to home. Talbot is a lead organizer for Neighbor 2 Neighbor, a grassroots organization supporting criminal justice reform. She is also a returning citizen.

After being incarcerated, she regained her right to vote at her release. She said she didn’t realize how important it was for her to vote and be civically engaged in her community until she came was released.

“I didn’t realize how deeply political my life was, my family’s life, until I came home,” Talbot said. “It has created an opportunity to have a say in what goes on in my city.”

Talbot said the right to vote can have tremendous effects on returning citizens, including reducing recidivism and encouraging agency.

Pastor Franklin Hobbs, founder of Healing Our Land Inc., an organization serving the currently incarcerated population as well as returning citizens in Boston, said full re-enfranchisement for people with felony convictions and the formerly incarcerated is an issue that can be traced back to the 1860s.

“I think the part of the 13th Amendment says that slavery was abolished with the exception of those who have been convicted, quote unquote, of a crime … really underscores the relic felony disenfranchisement of slavery and why we need to move toward universal suffrage,” Hobbs said. “Everyone should be able to participate in their own democracy.”

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