Disfranchisement

• 1. Introduction

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  Disfranchisement reached the Arctic town of Longyearbyen in 2023, when a council election was held under new rules that removed an estimated one-third of the voter roll. The Norwegian government had changed who was eligible. Voters now needed Norwegian citizenship or three years of residence in mainland Norway. Before, three years of living on Svalbard itself had been enough. The change swept out almost the entire community of non-Norwegians living in the town, compared with the previous election in 2019.

  The word has a twin spelling, disenfranchisement, which has become more common since 1982. Both describe the restriction of a person's or a group's right to vote, or any practice that has the effect of stopping them from using it. Sometimes a single change in eligibility is all it takes.

  That raises questions this documentary will follow. How do rules take votes away, sometimes without ever saying so? Which groups have been shut out, in which places, and for what stated reasons? And when does a society decide that an exclusion has gone too far?

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• 2. Lines Drawn In Law

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  A law can take the vote away openly, or it can do the same work quietly. The quiet methods include requirements applied in a discriminatory fashion, intimidation, and unreasonable demands placed on people who register or vote. The idea also stretches beyond ballots. It can mean stripping a person, a community or a being of a legal right, a privilege or an inherent immunity. Even political movements can be shut out when the barriers to entering political competition are set high.

  Women were once disfranchised as a group. Feminism has won them voting rights in most countries, although material and social exclusion continues widely.

  Age draws another line. The most common minimum voting age is 18, though some countries set it as low as 16 and others as high as 21. Citizens below the line are not enfranchised.

  Electoral thresholds create a subtler loss. When a threshold is unmitigated, voters who backed an option that later fell below it are effectively disenfranchised. Elected representatives can be affected too, when they are disqualified from some or all votes of the body they sit in. Non-voting members of the United States House of Representatives are one example. Article 7.3 of the Treaty on European Union is another, though as of 2025 it has never been applied. A related form arises in indirect elections, when some members of an electoral body are barred from taking part.

  In the United States, state governments have long held the power to set voter requirements, registration rules and the running of elections. Since the founding of the nation, legislatures have widened the franchise from certain propertied white men to near-universal adult suffrage at 18 and over. Women, except Native American women, gained the vote in 1920. All Native Americans followed in 1924, and people over 18 gained it in the 1970s. People convicted of some crimes remain the notable exclusion. Public interest groups now focus on fighting disfranchisement amid rising concerns that new voting restrictions are becoming more common.

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• 3. Closing The South

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  The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was enacted in 1870 to protect the suffrage of freedmen. Efforts to defeat its purpose began in the Southern states after the Reconstruction Era ended in 1877. State governments carried them out at the turn of the 20th century.

  North Carolina supplied the alarm. A late 19th-century alliance between Republicans and Populists there had cost the Democrats some elections. The Democrats built on earlier efforts and secured widespread disfranchisement by law.

  Between 1890 and 1908, Southern state legislatures passed new constitutions, constitutional amendments and laws that made registering and voting harder. The burden was heaviest when white staff administered the rules in a discriminatory way. Most black citizens lost the vote, and so did many poor whites. Voter rolls dropped dramatically in each state. The Republican Party was nearly eliminated in the region for decades, and the Democrats established one-party control across the southern states.

  The 1912 presidential race showed how hollow Southern Republicanism had become. Theodore Roosevelt ran against the party's nominee, Taft, and split the Republicans. In the South, the party had already been emptied out by the exclusion of African Americans. Democrat Woodrow Wilson won, becoming the first southern president since 1856. He was re-elected in 1916 in a much closer contest. In his first term, Wilson met the request of Southerners in his cabinet. He instituted overt racial segregation throughout federal government workplaces, along with racial discrimination in hiring. During World War I, American military forces were segregated, and black soldiers were poorly trained and equipped.

  Congress felt the effect most directly. The Democratic Solid South enjoyed "about 25 extra seats in Congress for each decade between 1903 and 1953". Its senators and representatives became entrenched. They favored seniority privileges, which became the standard by 1920. Southerners controlled the chairmanships of important committees and the leadership of the national Democratic Party.

  During the Great Depression, legislation creating numerous national social programs passed without the representation of African Americans. The result was gaps in coverage and discrimination in how the programs operated. Local life was affected as well. Black Southerners were absent from local voter rolls, so they were automatically excluded from serving in local courts, and juries were all white across the South.

  The Voting Rights Act of 1965 expanded political enfranchisement. It authorized the federal government to monitor registration practices and elections where populations had been historically underrepresented, and to enforce constitutional voting rights. Challenges continued into the 21st century, with numerous court cases in 2016 alone. Efforts to restrict voting for political advantage have not been confined to the South. Gerrymandering of electoral boundaries is another route to advantage. In January 2018, a federal court declared North Carolina's boundaries unconstitutional, and such cases are expected to reach the Supreme Court.

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• 4. Capital And Territory

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  The District of Columbia was established as the national capital on lands contributed by Maryland and Virginia. Its residents were not allowed to vote for local or federal representatives. The aim was to keep the district from endangering the national government. A committee drawn from the House of Representatives administered the city and district instead of any local or state government.

  In 1804, Congress cancelled presidential elections in the district and barred residents from voting in them. Amendment 23, ratified in 1964, restored their ability to vote for president.

  In 1846, the portion of the district contributed by Virginia was returned to that state, in a move described as protecting slavery. People living there, in what is now Alexandria, vote in local, Virginia and national elections.

  Congress uses the same constitutional provision to manage law for the district and for military bases in the United States. Until 1986, military personnel living on bases were treated as national representatives and were prohibited from voting where their bases were located. A law passed that year let them vote in local and state elections.

  The district's non-voting delegate to Congress was reestablished in 1971. The delegate cannot vote on bills or floor votes but may vote on some procedural and committee matters. The District of Columbia Home Rule Act of 1973 restored local government after a gap of a hundred years, with regular elections for mayor and other posts. The district elects no senator. People seeking standard representation for its 600,000 residents describe their status as disfranchised in relation to the federal government, though they do vote in presidential elections. Until 2009, no other NATO or OECD country had denied citizens of its capital a vote in national legislature elections.

  Puerto Ricans have been United States citizens since 1917 and have fought in every war since then. They were conscripted into the armed forces. The Federal Relations Act of 1950 makes federal laws that are not "locally inapplicable" the law of the land there. The former Chief of the Puerto Rico Supreme Court, Jose Trias Monge, said "no federal law has ever been found to be locally inapplicable to Puerto Rico."

  Contrary to a common misconception, residents pay some federal taxes. They contribute to Social Security, Medicare and other programs through payroll taxes. Yet they have no congressional representation and do not vote in presidential elections. Juan Torruella and other scholars argue that the national electoral process is therefore not a democracy.

  Both the Puerto Rican Independence Party and the New Progressive Party reject Commonwealth status. The Popular Democratic Party has officially said it favors fixing the remaining "deficits of democracy" that the Clinton and Bush administrations publicly recognized through Presidential Task Force Reports.

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• 5. Citizens Abroad

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  Chile extended the vote to citizens living abroad in 2014 through Law No. 20.748. Senators including Isabel Allende Bussi and Soledad Alvear sponsored the bill. Chileans overseas may vote in presidential elections and presidential primaries, but not for the national legislature or regional officials. The law also let them vote in the 2020 national plebiscite. Of nearly 60,000 registered overseas voters, 30,912 Chileans from 65 countries took part.

  Denmark takes the opposite approach. Danish citizens are generally barred from voting if they live outside the country for more than two years, and those who reside permanently abroad lose the right.

  Norway's constitution of 1814 carried a paragraph 53. It said that anyone in the service of another power, anyone buying or selling votes, and anyone convicted to forced labor would be disfranchised. The Storting repealed it in June 2022. Today, citizens who live outside Norway for more than 10 years may not vote unless they apply.

  Australia makes voting compulsory for resident citizens. Citizens who have been outside the country for more than one but fewer than six years may excuse themselves from voting while they remain abroad. Canada's Supreme Court ruled residency requirements for citizens unconstitutional in 2019, so all Canadian citizens can now vote.

  India lets non-resident citizens vote from abroad if they register as non-resident electors and have not taken citizenship elsewhere. They must be "absent from the country owing to employment, education etc" and otherwise eligible to register at their passport address.

  British citizens can vote at home with no time limit. Until 2024, however, they could not vote in UK general elections or referendums after living outside the country for more than 15 years. The Overseas Electors Bill was presented to Parliament in February 2018 to abolish that limit. It would also have dropped the requirement to have registered before leaving. The bill ran out of time because of the 2019 general election.

  The issue was hotly debated among British expatriates who had lived in other EU Member States for more than 15 years. They were barred from the referendum on European Union membership, despite arguably being more affected by the result than people living in the UK. The Conservative Party pledged to abolish what it called the "arbitrary 15-year limit" in its 2019 manifesto, won that election, and implemented the change in 2024.

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• 6. Disability At The Polls

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  In 2005-68% of polling stations in the United Kingdom were potentially inaccessible to disabled voters. In the same year, 30% of UK polling stations failed to comply with the law requiring a large print ballot and a physical template. Failing to provide properly for disabled electors can produce a selective disfranchisement of disabled people. It may be a deliberate feature of electoral law, a result of considering only non-disabled voters, or a continuing failure to fix known shortcomings.

  The loss can also strike someone who once voted freely. A person may move from non-disabled to disabled, the effects of a disability may change, or the accessibility of the electoral process may shift. In those cases the issue is the actual loss of a franchise rather than exclusion from the start.

  Eligibility is the first barrier. Some nations restrict the franchise based on measured intellectual capacity. People with learning impairments, mental health issues or neurological impairments may also be barred by law.

  Registration is the second. The UK Electoral Register is updated annually through a largely paper-based process, which gives poor access to people with visual or learning impairments. Postal voting needs ballots suited to visually impaired voters. The lack of a private, accessible booth makes postal voting unsuitable for others with specific physical and other disabilities.

  Polling stations must offer the physical accessibility expected of other public facilities, such as parking and ramps. There must also be enough of them to minimize queueing, which discriminates against people with mobility, pain or fatigue-based impairments. Signposting must be clear. Low-to-the-ground booths and equipment must allow visually or physically impaired voters to vote independently. Staff must understand why access matters, know how to show voters equipment such as physical templates, and be trained in "disability etiquette" so they do not patronize voters.

  The disability rights movement in the UK has drawn more attention to electoral accessibility. Campaigns such as Scope's 'Polls Apart' have exposed violations at polling stations.

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• 7. Crime And The Ballot

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  In ancient Greece and Rome, removal of the franchise was commonly part of the punishment for "infamous" crimes. It formed part of a "civil death", in which the convicted lost all rights and claim to property. Most medieval common law jurisdictions developed punishments that excluded felons from the community, from execution on sight to exclusion from community processes. Western felony disenfranchisement traces back to these traditions.

  Today the exclusion is usually reserved for the more serious class of crimes. In some common law jurisdictions those are felonies, which gave the practice its popular name. In the United States they are generally crimes carrying incarceration for more than a year or a fine exceeding $1000. Jurisdictions differ on whether the loss is permanent or ends after the sentence, parole or probation.

  Proponents argue that people who commit felonies have "broken" the social contract and given up their place in civil society. Some argue that felons have shown poor judgment and should have no voice in political decisions. Opponents answer that the practice conflicts with universal suffrage and affects civic participation generally. They also warn that it creates political incentives to skew criminal law toward targeting groups that oppose those in power.

  Maine and Vermont allow prison inmates, probationers and parolees to vote. At the other extreme, Virginia permanently disfranchises people with felony convictions. Former Governor Terry McAuliffe used his executive power in 2017 to restore voting rights to about 140,000 people with criminal backgrounds there.

  Twenty states bar people from voting while serving a felony sentence but restore the franchise automatically afterward. In Iowa, Governor Tom Vilsack issued an executive order in July 2005 restoring the right to everyone who had completed supervision, and the Iowa Supreme Court upheld it on the 31st of October 2005.

  Fifteen states plus the District of Columbia allow probationers and parolees to vote but not inmates. Four states allow probationers but not inmates or parolees. Eight states restore the vote to some, but not all, people after sentences end. Delaware waits five years after release, and Kentucky requires the person to take action.

  The Sentencing Project opposes disfranchisement after a sentence is served. The organization works to reduce arbitrary prison sentences for minor crimes and to help people rejoin society. Its website holds statistical data from the federal government and various states on the practice.

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• 8. Prisoners Around The World

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  The Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 in Australia denied the vote to anyone attainted of treason or convicted of an offense punishable by imprisonment for one year or longer. In 1983 the rule was relaxed, and in 1995 the loss was limited to those serving five years or longer. The Howard government legislated in 2006 to ban all prisoners from voting. In 2007, the High Court of Australia ruled in Roach v Electoral Commissioner that the constitution enshrines a limited right to vote. Citizens serving relatively short sentences, generally under three years, cannot be barred. In New South Wales, prisoners serving more than one year cannot vote in state elections.

  In November 2018, the New Zealand Supreme Court ruled that restrictions on prisoner voting were inconsistent with the nation's Bill of Rights. On the 25th of June 2020, the Labour government passed legislation letting prisoners serving under three years vote in that year's general election. On the 30th of April 2025, Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith confirmed that the National government would reinstate a blanket ban. He called it a reversal of the previous government's "soft on crime" policy.

  Hong Kong's Legislative Council member Leung Kwok Hung, known as Long Hair, and two prison inmates won a challenge on the 8th of December 2008. The court found blanket disfranchisement of prisoners violated Article 26 of the Basic Law and Article 21 of the Bill of Rights. The government repealed the provisions and set up polling stations at detention centers and prisons. The change took effect on the 31st of October 2009.

  India disqualifies all convicted prisoners, detained prisoners and people in police custody under the Representation of the People Act, 1951. Challenges in court, most notably in the Praveen Kumar Chaudhary case, have failed. Parole alone does not bar anyone. Shamsher Singh, convicted over the assassination of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh, voted for the first time after being released on parole. Taiwan uses the abrogation of political rights as a sentencing penalty, though it leaves the right to vote intact. China has a similar punishment called Deprivation of Political Rights.

  The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2005, in Hirst v United Kingdom (No 2), that general rules for automatic disfranchisement after conviction violate the European Convention on Human Rights. The ruling left room for disfranchisement in individual cases, such as that of Mohammed Bouyeri. Germany lets convicts vote unless a court removes the right for a specific political crime, for two to five years. About 1-2 persons a year lose the vote this way.

  Ireland's High Court ruled in 2000 that denying prisoners a postal vote breached the Constitution. The Supreme Court overturned that ruling in 2001. After the Hirst decision, the Electoral (Amendment) Act 2006 allowed postal voting by all prisoners.

  The United Kingdom suspends the vote of some prisoners under sections 3 and 3A of the Representation of the People Act 1983. Civil prisoners and those on remand keep it. Lord Falconer of Thoroton said the ruling might allow some, but not all, prisoners to vote. In 2010 the government was still reviewing the policy after an "unprecedented warning" from the Council of Europe. Its position was that removing the vote from some prisoners "can be a proportionate and proper response". Parliament voted in 2011 to maintain the ban. Chris Grayling then drafted a bill with two reform options and one that kept the blanket ban. In 2017 the government promised to extend the franchise only marginally.

  Israel places ballot boxes in prisons, and neither courts nor prison authorities can strip anyone of the national vote. Canada upheld inmate voting in Sauvé v Canada (Chief Electoral Officer) in 2002. South Africa's Constitutional Court has struck down two government attempts to deny prisoners the vote, and Peru allows inmates to vote. Finland even lets prisoners pre-vote from the prison itself.

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