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disenfranchisement
Missouri's Racist Gerrymander Is an Attack on Working Voters
As these attacks target communities of color, we’re witnessing the systematic disenfranchisement of people who’ve fought hardest for economic justice and workers’ rights.
Sep 13, 2025
As a Wendy’s worker, mother of two, and leader with Missouri Workers Center and Stand Up KC in Kansas City, I’ve dedicated my life to fighting for working families. I’ve worked in fast food for over 20 years, and I know what it means to struggle to barely make ends meet while corporations make record profits off our backs.
Today, I’m writing as someone who believes deeply in democracy, especially as a group of anti-worker Missouri lawmakers prepare to divide our community so that they can silence our voices, including my own.
States usually redraw electoral district boundaries every 10 years following the US Census to account for population shifts and demographic changes. But for political reasons, Texas lawmakers have gone ahead and redrawn their political map. And now several other states, including Missouri, are trying to do the same thing.
The NAACP is suing the State of Missouri to stop this action, calling it an “unconstitutional redistricting process” and a “blatant effort to silence Black voters and strip them of their fundamental rights.”
In Missouri’s 5th Congressional District, where I live, the clear aim of this gerrymandering is to dilute the voting power of Black and brown communities instead of letting us choose leaders who reflect our values. This isn’t just politics as usual. It’s a calculated assault on democracy and a power grab for an elite few.
As these attacks target communities of color, we’re witnessing the systematic disenfranchisement of people who’ve fought hardest for economic justice and workers’ rights. These same corporate-backed lawmakers recently repealed guaranteed sick days for more than 700,000 workers, including me and my coworkers.
My community deserves a voice in choosing our representation instead of having politicians strip it away—politicians who care more about protecting themselves instead of the people they were elected to represent.
A couple years ago, I got sick with what I thought was the flu. I didn’t have health insurance, so I couldn’t see a doctor. I stayed home from my shift at Taco Bell to protect my coworkers and customers from a potentially contagious illness. I was already falling behind on rent after management cut my hours prior to getting sick, and taking time to recover was the final straw. I missed $450—over half my rent. I came home from work to an eviction notice. My son Rashaad and I lost our home.
As a parent, few things are more heartbreaking than not being able to care for your children properly. Had I been able to take a few days off while still getting paid, we could have stayed housed. I couldn’t help getting sick, but the greedy corporation I worked for chose to abandon me as soon as I stopped making them rich.
If I had paid sick days, that wouldn’t happen. And ironically enough, I previously helped win paid sick days through a ballot initiative. Despite promises to respect the will of the people, Missouri politicians sided with big business over working families and overturned our right to paid leave. By gutting this policy, these corporate-backed politicians didn’t just force workers like me to go to work sick—they stole money from our pockets and food from our cupboards.
This redistricting scheme is clearly part of a two-pronged plan to suppress voter participation and double down on attacking the rights of working people. In fact, they’re using the same special session they’ve called to pass redistricting to also destroy a 115-year old ballot initiative process in our state constitution that won us—across party lines—paid leave, Medicaid expansion, and restored abortion rights.
But working people like me don’t back down when our lives are on the line. We stay committed to the fight for our rights, from the streets, to the strike line, to the statehouse. My community deserves a voice in choosing our representation instead of having politicians strip it away—politicians who care more about protecting themselves instead of the people they were elected to represent.
We were already living in modern-day economic slavery. Now they’re trying to put us in political slavery too. But we won’t let them. Across this country, working people will not be silenced or divided. Our political leaders need to stop trying to rig the rules and let the people decide who represents us.
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Mass Disenfranchisement for Felony Convictions Makes US an 'Outlier Nation'
"The right to vote, and the legitimacy of the democratic system in the United States, should not depend on its criminal legal system, which is built upon and perpetuates discrimination," said an advocate with Human Rights Watch.
Jun 27, 2024
The common U.S. practice of stripping the franchise from people with criminal convictions leaves the country "out of step with the rest of the world," according to a report published Thursday by the Sentencing Project, Human Rights Watch, and the ACLU.
Despite recent progress in some states, the groups estimated that more than 4.4 million U.S. residents were disenfranchised because of a felony conviction as of 2022, and "thousands more eligible voters were unable to cast their ballot because they were in prison."
"The states with the most restrictive disenfranchisement laws are those with the highest percentages of Black and Latinx people," the new report notes. "Eleven U.S. states permanently disenfranchise at least some people with felony convictions for the rest of their lives. Fourteen U.S. states disenfranchise people both for the duration of their prison sentence and, upon their return to the community, during the time they are under parole or felony probation supervision. An additional state, Louisiana, restores voting rights to people on felony probation and parole once they have been out of prison for five years or more."
"Twenty-three states restore voting rights to people when they return to the community from prison," the report adds, "although at least four states that otherwise restore voting rights after a felony conviction permanently disenfranchise residents for certain election practices."
The 55-page analysis places U.S. disenfranchisement laws alongside the practices of 136 other countries with populations over 1.5 million people and concludes that the U.S.—with its "punitive criminal legal system" and high incarceration rates—is an "outlier nation."
"Wide access to voting is a cornerstone of rights-respecting, democratic government."
More than half of the countries examined in the report "never or rarely deny a person's right to vote because of a conviction." When placed among the remaining countries "where laws deny the right in broader sets of circumstances," the report states, "the U.S. is toward the restrictive end of the spectrum and disenfranchises, largely through U.S. state law, a wider swath of people on the whole."
"In five countries—the Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Madagascar, Morocco, and Togo—people whose convictions fall in certain categories are disenfranchised permanently," the report observes. "These five countries are in the same category with the 11 U.S. states that permanently disenfranchise at least some people convicted of felonies."
Alison Leal Parker, deputy U.S. director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement that "wide access to voting is a cornerstone of rights-respecting, democratic government, which is why the right to vote is protected in international human rights law and why the U.S. should reform its outlier status on voting rights."
"The right to vote, and the legitimacy of the democratic system in the United States, should not depend on its criminal legal system, which is built upon and perpetuates discrimination," said Parker.
While a number of states have moved in recent years to loosen voting restrictions for people with felony convictions and restore the franchise at the time of a person's release from incarceration, just four U.S. jurisdictions—Vermont, Maine, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C.—allow people to vote while they are imprisoned.
Late last year, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) introduced legislation that would guarantee voting rights to incarcerated citizens and end felony disenfranchisement in federal elections. The bill has just five cosponsors in the Senate and 25 in the House, even though polling data has shown a majority of Americans support guaranteeing voting rights to all, including incarcerated people.
The new report calls on the United States to "end felony disenfranchisement and extend voting rights to all otherwise voting-eligible persons without regard to their criminal legal system contact or convictions." It also recommends that the country eliminate all requirements that citizens pay court-related fines before being allowed to vote again—a practice the report calls a "modern-day poll tax."
"In the United States, this policy is rooted in historical practices intended to reduce electoral participation of citizens of color who would otherwise be eligible to vote," the human rights groups wrote.
Jonathan Topaz, a staff attorney with the ACLU's Voting Rights Project, said Thursday that "even as we've seen more U.S. states make progress in expanding rights restoration, there remain substantial challenges to voter access."
"Convoluted rights restoration laws have resulted in voter confusion about eligibility among returning citizens," said Topaz "Additionally, in many states, returning citizens become eligible to vote only upon payment of various legal financial obligations such as fees, costs, fines, and/or restitution, which essentially institutes a pay-to-vote system. These obstacles must be abolished to ensure full civic participation."
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Advocates Applaud House Push to Restore Voting Rights to Formerly Incarcerated People
"After 50 years of mass incarceration in America—and 50 years of stripping voting rights from justice-impacted individuals—it's time for a better path forward," said one advocate.
Jul 28, 2023
Voting rights and criminal justice reform advocates on Thursday applauded U.S. House Democrats for reintroducing legislation to end the disenfranchisement of 3.5 million people who are barred from voting in federal elections due to their past prison sentences—part of what Rep. Valerie Foushee, a co-sponsor of the bill, called the country's "long history of weaponizing incarceration status."
Foushee (D-N.C.) was one of six Democrats to introduce the Democracy Restoration Act, led by Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas.).
The bill would end the denial of federal voting rights to people who have been incarcerated for felony convictions and would provide outreach to people with past convictions about their newly restored right to participate in elections, eliminating what the Sentencing Project called "the complicated patchwork of state laws that creates a lack of uniform standards for voting in federal elections, exacerbates racial disparities in access to the ballot box, and contributes to confusion and misinformation regarding voting rights."
Twenty-four states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico currently allow formerly incarcerated people to vote in state and local elections, but they cannot participate in federal elections. People on felony probation or parole cannot vote in 25 states, and in 11 states a conviction can lead to lifetime disenfranchisement.
"There's no justification for denying people who have paid their dues a voice in our democracy," said co-sponsor Rep. Troy Carter (D-La.), who spoke at a press conference on the bill on Thursday.
Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), and Greg Casar (D-Texas) are also co-sponsors of the House bill, while Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) introduced the legislation in the Senate in May.
"It's in our values to say that a second chance is part of America," said Cardin at the press conference.
Recent polling from Stand Up America, the Sentencing Project, and other groups has shown that a majority of Americans believe the right to vote should be extended to all Americans regardless of past incarceration—a move that Nicole D. Porter of the Sentencing Project noted would end the United States' status as "an international outlier."
"After 50 years of mass incarceration in America—and 50 years of stripping voting rights from justice-impacted individuals—it's time for a better path forward," said Porter, senior director of advocacy for the group. "By empowering justice-impacted people with the right to vote, we strengthen the principles of fairness and equality in our democracy. That's why The Sentencing Project will continue to support legislative efforts that protect and expand the right to vote for all people impacted by the criminal legal system, including those currently in prison."
A policy brief by the Sentencing Project earlier this year explained how enfranchising formerly incarcerated people is a public safety measure, helping to reduce recidivism, as well as a way to advance criminal justice reform.
"Voting is among a range of prosocial behaviors in which justice-impacted persons can partake, like getting a college education, that is associated with reduced criminal conduct," the April report read. "Among Americans with a history of criminal legal system involvement, having the right to vote or the act of voting is related to reduced recidivism. The re-entry process after incarceration improves because restoring voting rights gives citizens the sense that their voice can be heard in the political process, and contributes to building an individual's positive identity as a community member."
Stand Up America founder and president Sean Eldridge said the bill is a step away from "a racist relic of the Jim Crow era."
"By introducing legislation to restore voting rights, Democrats in Congress are taking an important step toward acknowledging the injustice of these laws and building momentum to rectify them," said Eldridge. "Americans returning to their communities should have a say in who represents them in government and the policies that affect their lives—from the quality of their kids' education to access to parks and clean water—just like everyone else."
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