Out of Step: U.S. Policy on Voting Rights in Global Perspective

The Sentencing Project, Human Rights Watch, and the American Civil Liberties Union today released a new report, “Out of Step: U.S. Policy on Voting Rights in Global Perspective,” revealing that the United States is out of step with the rest of the world in disenfranchising large numbers of citizens based on criminal convictions.

As of 2022, over 4.4 million people in the United States were disenfranchised due to a felony conviction, and thousands more eligible voters were unable to cast their ballot due to their incarceration status.

The report examines the laws of 136 countries around the world with populations of 1.5 million and above, and finds that the majority — 73 of the 136 — never or rarely deny a person’s right to vote because of a criminal conviction. In the other 63 countries, where some laws deny the right to vote in broader sets of circumstances, the United States sits at the top of the restrictive end of the spectrum, disenfranchising a wider swath of people overall.