🔎 The Question
Recent scholarship finds eligible voters who live in neighborhoods with many arrested or incarcerated people vote at lower rates than similar voters in less-affected neighborhoods. This study asks whether a high-profile policy change — Amendment Four, the 2018 Florida ballot initiative that promised to re-enfranchise most people with felony convictions — narrowed that turnout gap.
📍 How neighborhoods and households were located
- Prison release records were used to identify the neighborhoods and specific households where formerly incarcerated individuals live.
- Those locations were linked to voter files to identify eligible neighbors and housemates and their voting histories.
📊 What was compared
- Turnout in the 2018 election among eligible voters living near formerly incarcerated people versus turnout among other eligible voters.
- The analysis focuses on whether proximity to formerly incarcerated residents produced a relative increase in turnout when Amendment Four was on the ballot.
🧾 Key finding
- No evidence that Amendment Four increased turnout among eligible voters living near formerly incarcerated individuals in 2018 relative to other voters.
⚖️ Why this matters
- Restoring voting rights through constitutional amendment addressed formal disenfranchisement but did not by itself close the turnout gap associated with histories of policing and incarceration.
- Closing that gap will require additional, targeted investments and direct engagement with communities most affected by the criminal legal system.
