1. The first major study of this sort is Fellner, Jamie and Mauer, Marc, Losing the Vote: The Impact of Felon Disenfranchisement Laws in the United States (Washington, D.C.: The Sentencing Project and Human Rights Watch, 1998)Google Scholar, which found that in the late 1990s a total of 3.9 million Americans, including 1.4 million African Americans, were disenfranchised by such policies. A more recent study found that by the 2000 election, felon disenfranchisement provisions affected 4.7 million Americans, including 1.8 million African Americans. Uggen, Christopher and Manza, Jeff, “Democratic Contraction? Political Consequences of Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States,” American Sociological Review 67 (12 2002): 777, at 797–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. One such study sought to determine whether electoral outcomes from 1972 to 2000 would have been different if no felon disenfranchisement provisions had been in effect, and it concluded that these provisions “may have altered the outcome of as many as seven recent U.S. Senate elections and at least one presidential election.” Uggen and Manza, “Democratic Contraction?” 794. A follow-up study, which focused more narrowly on “the electoral impact of restoring voting rights to felons who are no longer incarcerated: ex-felons, and those on probation or parole,” found that “three Senate elections are likely to have been reversed if ex-felons had been allowed the ballot,” and “as many as five Senate elections might have been reversed if probationers and parolees were added to the rolls.” Manza, Jeff and Uggen, Christopher, “Punishment and Democracy: Disenfranchisement of Nonincarcerated Felons in the United States,” Perspectives on Politics 2 (09 2004): 491, 497, 499CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Thus Uggen and Manza in their studies argue that these policies have reduced voter turnout in recent elections. Meanwhile, Miles, Thomas J. contends in a recent article that “on average felons belong to demographic groups that, although eligible to vote, infrequently exercise that right.” “Felon Disenfranchisement and Voter Turnout,” Journal of Legal Studies 33 (01 2004): 85, 122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Among the various studies finding the justifications unpersuasive, see Note, “The Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons: Citizenship, Criminality, and ‘The Purity of the Ballot Box,’” Harvard Law Review 102 (04 1989): 1300–1317CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fletcher, George P., “Disenfranchisement as Punishment: Reflections on the Racial Uses of Infamia,” UCLA Law Review 46 (08 1999): 1895–1908Google Scholar; Ewald, Alec C., “‘Civil Death’: The Ideological Paradox of Criminal Disenfranchisement Law in the United States,” Wisconsin Law Review (2002): 1072–1089Google Scholar; Karlan, Pamela S., “Convictions and Doubts: Retribution, Representation, and the Debate over Felon Disenfranchisement,” Stanford Law Review 56 (04 2004): 1147–1170Google Scholar; Ewald, Alec C., “An ‘Agenda for Demolition’: The Fallacy and the Danger of the ‘Subversive Voting’ Argument for Felony Disenfranchisement,” Columbia Human Rights Law Review 36 (Fall 2004): 109–143Google Scholar; Pettus, Katherine Irene, Felony Disenfranchisement in America: Historical Origins, Institutional Racism, and Modern Consequences (New York, 2005)Google Scholar; Hull, Elizabeth A., The Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons (Philadelphia, 2006), 43–54Google Scholar. For rare examples of scholarly studies that have found any justifications to be persuasive, see Manfredi, Christopher P., “Judicial Review and Criminal Disenfranchisement in the United States and Canada,” Review of Politics 60 (Spring 1998): 277–305CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Clegg, Roger, “Who Should Vote?” Texas Review of Law and Politics 6 (Fall 2001): 159–178Google Scholar; Brooks, George, “Felon Disenfranchisement: Law, History, Policy, and Politics,” Fordham Urban Law Journal 32 (09 2005): 851–899.Google Scholar

5. For representative studies, see Shapiro, Andrew L., “Challenging Criminal Disenfranchisement Under the Voting Rights Act: A New Strategy,” Yale Law Journal 103 (11 1993): 537–566CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Harvey, Alice E., “Ex-Felon Disenfranchisement and Its Influence on the Black Vote: The Need for a Second Look,” University of Pennsylvania Law Review 142 (01 1994): 1145–1189CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Note, “One Person, No Vote: The Laws of Felon Disenfranchisement,” Harvard Law Review 115 (05 2002): 1939, at 1957–63Google Scholar; Thompson, Mark E., “Don't Do the Crime If You Ever Intend to Vote Again: Challenging the Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons as Cruel and Unusual Punishment,” Seton Hall Law Review 33 (2002): 167–205Google Scholar; Cosgrove, John R., “Four New Arguments Against the Constitutionality of Felon Disenfranchisement,” Thomas Jefferson Law Review 26 (Spring 2004): 157–202Google Scholar; Handelsman, Lauren, “Giving the Barking Dog a Bite: Challenging Felon Disenfranchisement Under the Voting Rights Act of 1965,” Fordham Law Review 73 (03 2005): 1875–1940.Google Scholar

6. For the dates of origin of these provisions, see Keyssar, Alexander, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, With a New Afterword (New York, 2000), 358–361, 390–396Google Scholar; Manza, Jeff and Uggen, Christopher, Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy (New York:, 2006), 238–239CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For general trends regarding their enactment, see Keyssar, The Right to Vote, 62–63, 162–63, 302–8, 330–31; Manza and Uggen, Locked Out 49–59. For a statistical study of the factors correlated with passage of restrictive criminal disenfranchisement provisions, see Manza and Uggen, Locked Out, which concludes: “When African Americans make up a larger proportion of a state's prison population, that state is significantly more likely to adopt or extend felon disenfranchisement” (67). For a statistical study of the factors correlated with more restrictive felon disenfranchisement policies, which concludes that “the size of the minority population, parity in incarceration rates, and the degree of legislative professionalization are the primary explanatory factors of this policy,” see Preuhs, Robert R., “State Felon Disenfranchisement Policy,” Social Science Quarterly 82 (12 2001): 733CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a statistical study of the factors correlated with relaxation of such policies, which concludes that these policies “are more likely to be repealed under a unified Democratic state government,” and in “states in which electoral support for Democrats at the presidential level is generally weak,” see Yoshinaka, Antoine and Grose, Christian R., “Partisan Politics and Electoral Design: The Enfranchisement of Felons and Ex-Felons in the United States, 1960–99,” State and Local Government Review 37 (Winter 2005): 49, 50CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. See Kousser, J. Morgan, “The Undermining of the First Reconstruction: Lessons for the Second,” Davidson, Chandler, ed., Minority Vote Dilution (Washington, D.C., 1984), 34–35Google Scholar; Shapiro, “Challenging Criminal Disenfranchisement Under the Voting Rights Act,” 540–42; Behrens, Angela, Uggen, Christopher, and Manza, Jeff, “Ballot Manipulation and the ‘Menace of Negro Domination’: Racial Threat and Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States, 1850–1920,” American Journal of Sociology 109 (11 2003): 559, 569–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Manza and Uggen, “Punishment and Democracy,” 494 (updated through January 2007). Only Maine and Vermont do not currently have any criminal disenfranchisement policies.

9. I have located the records of the debates (as distinct from merely the journal of proceedings) for the following 114 conventions: AL (1861, 1901); AK (1955–56); AZ (1910); AR (1868); CA (1849, 1878–79); CT (1818, 1965); DE (1831, 1852–53, 1896–97); GA (1877); HI (1950, 1968, 1978); ID (1889); IL (1847, 1869–70, 1920–22, 1969–70); IN (1850–51); IA (1844, 1846, 1857); KS (1859); KY (1849–50, 1890–91); LA (1845, 1864, 1973–74); ME (1819); MD (1850–51, 1864, 1867, 1967–68); MA (1820–21, 1853, 1917–19); MI (1835, 1850, 1867, 1907–8, 1961–62); MN (1857); MS (1865); MO (1861–63, 1875); MT (1889, 1971–72); NE (1871, 1919–20); NV (1864); NH (1876, 1889, 1902, 1912, 1918–23, 1930, 1938–41, 1948, 1956–59, 1964, 1974, 1984); NJ (1844, 1947); NY (1821, 1846, 1867–68, 1894, 1915, 1938, 1967); NC (1835); ND (1889, 1971–72); OH (1850–51, 1873–74, 1912); OR(1857); PA (1837–38, 1872–73, 1967–68); RI(1842, 1944, 1951, 1955, 1958, 1964–69, 1973); SC (1868); SD (1885, 1889); TN (1953, 1959, 1965, 1971, 1977); TX(1845, 1875, 1974); UT (1895); VA (1829–30, 1850–51, 1861, 1867–68, 1901–2, 1945, 1956); WV (1861–63); WI (1846, 1847–48); WY (1889).

10. The 233 state constitutional conventions throughout American history are: AL (1819, 1861, 1865, 1867, 1875, 1901); AK (1955–56); AZ (1910); AR (1836, 1861, 1864, 1868, 1874, 1917–18, 1969–70, 1978–80); CA (1849, 1878–79); CO (1875–76); CT (1818, 1902, 1965); DE (1776, 1792, 1831, 1852–53, 1896–97); FL (1838–39, 1861–62, 1865, 1868, 1885); GA (1776–77, 1788, 1789 [2], 1795, 1798, 1833, 1839, 1861, 1865, 1867–68, 1877); HI (1950, 1968, 1978); ID (1889); IL (1818, 1847, 1862, 1869–70, 1920–22, 1969–70); IN (1816, 1850–51); IA (1844, 1846, 1857); KS (1855, 1857, 1858, 1859); KY (1792, 1794, 1849–50, 1890–91); LA(1812, 1845, 1852, 1861, 1864, 1867–68, 1879, 1898, 1913, 1921, 1973–74, 1992); ME (1819); MD (1776, 1850–51, 1864, 1867, 1967–68); MA (1779–80, 1820–21, 1853, 1917–19); MI (1835, 1850, 1867, 1907–8, 1961–62); MN (1857); MS (1817, 1832, 1851, 1861, 1865, 1868, 1890); MO (1820, 1845–46, 1861–63, 1865, 1875, 1922–23, 1943–44); MT (1866, 1884, 1889, 1971–72); NE (1871, 1875, 1919–20); NV (1863, 1864); NH (1776, 1778–79, 1781–83, 1791–92, 1850–51, 1876, 1889, 1902, 1912, 1918–23, 1930, 1938–41, 1948, 1956–59, 1964, 1974, 1984); NJ (1844, 1947, 1966); NM (1848, 1849, 1850, 1872, 1889–90, 1907, 1910, 1969); NY (1776–77, 1801, 1821, 1846, 1867–68, 1894, 1915, 1938, 1967); NC (1776, 1835, 1861–62, 1865–66, 1868, 1875); ND (1889, 1971–72); OH (1802, 1850–51, 1873–74, 1912); OK (1906–7); OR (1857); PA (1776, 1789–90, 1837–38, 1872–73, 1967–68); RI (1842, 1944, 1951, 1955, 1958, 1964–69, 1973, 1986); SC (1790, 1861, 1865, 1868, 1895); SD (1883, 1885, 1889); TN (1796, 1834, 1870, 1953, 1959, 1965, 1971, 1977); TX (1836, 1845, 1861, 1866, 1868–69, 1875, 1974); UT (1895); VT (1777, 1786, 1793, 1814, 1822, 1828, 1836, 1843, 1850, 1857, 1870); VA (1776, 1829–30, 1850–51, 1861, 1864, 1867–68, 1901–2, 1945, 1956); WA (1878, 1889); WV (1861–63, 1872); WI (1846, 1847–48); WY (1889).

11. All the states but Colorado, Florida, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Vermont, and Washington are represented in the sample of recorded convention debates.

12. For studies drawing on state convention debates regarding suffrage requirements, see Porter, Kirk H., A History of Suffrage in the United States (Chicago, 1918)Google Scholar; Steinfeld, Robert J., “Property and Suffrage in the Early American Republic,” Stanford Law Review 41 (01 1989): 335–376CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cogan, Jacob Katz, “The Look Within: Property, Capacity, and Suffrage in Nineteenth-Century America,” Yale Law Journal 107 (11 1997): 473–498CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Scalia, Laura J., “Who Deserves Political Influence? How Liberal Ideals Helped Justify Mid-Nineteenth-Century Exclusionary Policies,” American Journal of Political Science 42 (04 1998): 349–376CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Perman, Michael, Struggle for Mastery: Disfranchisement in the South, 1888–1908 (Chapel Hill, 2001).Google Scholar

13. Alexander Keyssar has compiled a partial list of state convention debates regarding criminal disenfranchisement provisions (and he has also included citations to relevant pages in several of the state convention journals). See Keyssar, The Right to Vote, 428–29 n. 19, 443 n. 84.

14. I have limited the analysis to debates about criminal disenfranchisement provisions and have not included debates about whether to disenfranchise Confederate sympathizers or duelists, or about whether to prevent individuals who committed vote fraud in a given election from voting in that particular election (as opposed to debates about disenfranchising participants in voter fraud in future elections or on a permanent basis, which have been included).

15. 418 U.S. 24 (1974), 54.

16. 471 U.S. 222 (1985), 233 (quotations transposed).

17. See, for instance, Cotton v. Fordice, 157 F.3d 388 (5th Cir. 1998), sustaining Mississippi's provision; Howard v. Gilmore, 2000 U.S. App. LEXIS 2680 (4th Cir. 2000), sustaining Virginia's provision; and Johnson v. Bush, 405 F.3d 1214 (11th Cir. 2005), which sustained Florida's provision and was left undisturbed when the U.S. Supreme Court in November 2005 declined to hear an appeal. To be sure, challenges have also been advanced on grounds other than the equal protection clause, such as Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), and in these cases litigants have argued that it is not necessary to demonstrate a racial intent underlying adoption of these provisions, but that it is enough to show that they have a racially disparate impact. Of particular importance is the decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Farrakhan v. Washington, 338 F.3d 1009 (9th Cir. 2003), rehearing en banc denied, 359 F.3d 1116 (2004), permitting a VRA-based challenge to Washington's provision.

18. The citations to the arguments by these nine delegates are as follows: ME 1819–20, p. 125 (Ether Shepley); MA 1853, II:273–74, 277 (George Haskell); MI 1867, 2:292 (Henry Coolidge); ND 1971–72, pp. 1165–66 (George Longmire); TX 1974, p. 520 (Elizabeth R. Andujar); TX 1974, p. 523 (D. R. Uher); TX 1974, p. 526 (Bill Hollowell); TX 1974, p. 528 (H. J. Blanchard); WV 1861–63, I:154–56 (Ephraim Hall).

19. MA 1853, II:273–74, 277.

20. TX 1974, p. 520.

21. TX 1974, p. 523.

22. ME 1819–20, pp. 123, 124–25.

23. MI 1867, 2:292.

24. ND 1971–72, pp. 1165–66.

25. 75 Ala. 582(1884), p. 585.

26. The citations to the arguments by these fifteen delegates are as follows: ID 1889, p. 920 (Jas. H. Beatty); KY 1890–91, p. 1836 (John D. Carroll); KY 1890–91, p. 1864 (Frank P. Straus); KY 1890–91, p. 1868 (Laban T. Moore); MD 1850–51, I:100 (J. W. Crisfield); MD 1864, pp. 1290, 1294 (Archibald Stirling Jr.); MA 1853, 2:277 (P. Emory Aldrich); MA 1853, 2:277 (George Haskell); MI 1867, 2:291–92, 293, 294 (DeWitt Chapin); NH 1889, p. 35 (David Cross); ND 1971–72, pp. 768–69 (Neil Thompson); PA 1872–73, 2:57 (Charles Buckalew); PA 1872–73, 2:61; (George M. Dallas); TX 1974, p. 518 (John Hoestenbach); WV 1861–63, I:169 (Thomas Harrison).

27. KY 1890–91, p. 1864.

28. MA 1853, 2:277.

29. ID 1889, p. 920.

30. NH 1889, p. 35.

31. KY 1890–91, p. 1868.

32. KY 1890–91, p. 1836.

33. MD 1850–51, I:100.

34. WV 1861–63, I:169.

35. MI 1867, II: 291–92, 293.

36. The citations to the arguments advanced by these fourteen delegates are as follows: DE 1852–53, p. 96 (Benjamin T. Biggs); DE 1896–97, p. 3089 (Joshua A. Ellegood); DE 1896–97, p. 3090 (Wilson T. Cavender); ID 1889, pp. 922, 925 (William H. Claggett); KY 1890–91, pp. 1873, 1877 (H. R. Bourland); KY 1890–91, p. 1886 (Robert Rodes); MD 1967–68, p. 1971 (Helen L. Koss); MO 1875, 5:141 (Thomas Gantt); MO 1875, 5:142 (Benjamin Massey); PA 1872–73, 1:716 (Charles Hunsicker); PA 1872–73, 2:50, 54 (George Lear); PA 1872–73, 2:53 (Henry Carter); PA 1872–73, 2:54 (Hugh M'Allister); WV 1861–63, I:170 (Waitman T. Willey).

37. KY 1890–91, p. 1873.

38. WV 1861–63, I:170.

39. ID 1889, pp. 922, 925.

40. PA 1872–73, 2:54.

41. PA 1872–73, 1:716.

42. PA 1872–73, 2:50.

43. 380 F.2d 445 (2nd Cir. 1967), pp. 451–52.

44. The citations to the arguments by these five delegates are as follows: MD 1967–68, p. 2027 (Franklin L. Burdette); MT 1889, p. 361 (George W. Stapleton); NY 1867–68, p. 479 (Augustine J. H. Duganne); ND 1971–72, p. 1165 (George Longmire); TX 1974, p. 518 (John Hoestenbach).

45. MD 1967–68, p. 2027.

46. ND 1971–72 p. 1165.

47. MT 1889, p. 361.

48. NY 1867–68, p. 479.

49. For recent statements from scholars, see Shapiro, “Challenging Criminal Disenfranchisement Under the Voting Rights Act,” 538; Valelly, Richard M., The Two Reconstructions: The Struggle for Black Enfranchisement (Chicago, 2004), 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldman, Daniel S., “The Modern-Day Literacy Test? Felon Disenfranchisement and Race Discrimination,” Stanford Law Review 57 (11 2004): 611, 626Google Scholar; Hull, The Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons, 18–20. As for judges who have reached such conclusions, see the decision of a three-judge 11th Circuit panel (later reversed by the Court sitting en banc) with regard to Florida's criminal disenfranchisement provision. Johnson v. Bush, 353 F.3d 1287 (11th Cir. 2003), p. 1296, reversed upon rehearing en banc, 405 F.3d 1214 (11th Cir. 2005)

50. AL 1901, p. 8.

51. AL 1901, pp. 2924–25 (emphasis added).

52. As McMillan, Malcolm C. reported: “Most of the crimes contained in the report of the suffrage committee came from an ordinance by John Fielding Burns, a Black Belt planter. The crimes he listed were those he had taken cognizance of for years in his justice of the peace court in the Burnsville district, where nearly all of his cases involved Negroes.” Constitutional Development in Alabama, 1789–1901: A Study in Politics, the Negro, and Sectionalism (Chapel Hill, 1955), 275 n. 76Google Scholar. Additionally, it is said that Burns thought the disqualification for wife-beating alone would disenfranchise a large percentage of African Americans. Gross, Jimmie Frank, “Alabama Politics and the Negro, 1874–1901” (Ph.D. diss., University of Georgia, 1969), 244Google Scholar, cited in Kousser, “The Undermining of the First Reconstruction,” 35.

53. For a review of the evidence in support of this proposition, see Underwood v. Hunter, 730 F.2d 614 (11th Cir. 1984), pp. 619–21; as well as Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U.S. 222 (1985), pp. 225–33.

54. OR 1857, p. 318.

55. VA 1901–2, p. 2972.

56. Smith, Rogers M., Civic Ideals: Conflicting Visions of Citizenship in U.S. History (New Haven, 1997), 383.Google Scholar

57. In this regard, although there is no shortage of racially explicit speeches in support of suffrage limitations in post-Reconstruction southern state conventions, even here caution should be exercised and distinctions should be made in drawing conclusions about connections between the general desire to limit African American voting and the specific use of criminal disenfranchisement provisions to accomplish this goal in particular states. There is no disputing that turn-of-the-twentieth-century southern conventions were held for the express purpose of disenfranchising African Americans; the key question is to what extent each of these conventions sought to expand criminal disenfranchisement policies as a means to this end. In some instances, changes to criminal disenfranchisement policies were a vehicle for achieving this goal; in other instances, convention delegates achieved this goal through means other than by modifying criminal disenfranchisement policies, and the racially explicit speeches in these state conventions were uttered with an eye toward adoption of other disenfranchising mechanisms.

58. Regarding the Mississippi Convention of 1890, the Mississippi Supreme Court in Ratliff v. Beale, 74 Miss. 247 (1896), noted: “Restrained by the federal constitution from discriminating against the negro race, the convention discriminated against its characteristics, and the offenses to which its weaker members were prone.” In particular: “Burglary, theft, arson, and obtaining money under false pretenses were declared to be disqualifications, while robbery and murder, and other crimes in which violence was the principal ingredient, were not” (246–47). As for the South Carolina Convention of 1895, Kousser reported that “a delegate moved to add to the list of disfranchising crimes housebreaking, receiving stolen goods, breach of trust with a fraudulent intention, fornication, sodomy, assault with intent to ravish, miscegenation, incest, and larceny, and to strike out theft and the middle-class crime of embezzlement. The conventioneers agreed, as they did to another member's proposal to include wife-beating. Murderers, however, were allowed to vote.” “The Undermining of the First Reconstruction,” 35. See Tindall, George Brown, South Carolina Negroes, 1877–1900 (Columbia, 1952), 82Google Scholar. See also Shapiro, “Challenging Criminal Disenfranchisement under the Voting Rights Act,” 541; Underwood, James L., The Constitution of South Carolina, Volume IV: The Struggle for Political Equality (Columbia, 1994), 109–112.Google Scholar

59. Of particular note was an 1876 amendment to the Virginia Constitution adding petty larceny to the list of disqualifying offenses. McDanel, Ralph C. wrote that this provision was “aimed directly at the negro” because “petit larceny was a common offense among them.” The Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901–1902 (Baltimore, 1928), 6Google Scholar. See also Morton, Richard L., The Negro in Virginia Politics, 1865–1902 (Charlottesville, 1919), p. 92Google Scholar; Lewinson, Paul, Race, Class, and Party: A History of Negro Suffrage and White Politics in the South (1932; New York, 1959), 66Google Scholar; Wynes, Charles E., Race Relations in Virginia, 1870–1902 (1961; Totowa, N.J., 1971), 13.Google Scholar

60. It is noteworthy that these modifications to criminal disenfranchisement provisions in post-Reconstruction southern state constitutions have each now been eliminated, whether as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court decision (as in the case of the 1985 invalidation of Alabama's moral-turpitude provision as applied to misdemeanors), or due to the subsequent action of state constitution-makers (as with the adoption of the Virginia Constitution of 1971, which removed all nonfelonies from the list of disqualifying offenses; several amendments to the Mississippi Constitution, including a 1950 amendment striking burglary from the list of disqualifying crimes and a 1968 amendment adding murder and rape; and a 1971 amendment to the South Carolina Constitution replacing a long list of specific disqualifying offenses with a provision for disqualification upon conviction of “serious crime”). This conclusion also applies to several other late nineteenth-century southern state provisions that might be considered by some to have been motivated by racial animus or whose motivation is disputed. Thus Florida's specific list of disqualifying offenses, to which larceny was added in the 1868 Constitution, was replaced in the 1968 Constitution by a reference solely to individuals convicted of “a felony.” And Georgia's lengthy list of specific disqualifying crimes, to which larceny was also appended in the 1877 Constitution, was replaced in the 1983 Constitution by a reference to conviction for a “felony involving moral turpitude.”

61. The citations to the arguments by these delegates are as follows: ID 1889, p. 919 (John S. Gray); LA 1973–74, p. 1201 (James Derbes); ME 1819–20, p. 123 (George Thacher); ME 1819–20, p. 124 (Daniel Cony); MD 1850–51, I:101 (Thomas R. Stewart); MD 1850–51, I:101 (Thomas B. Dorsey); MD 1864, p. 1289 (Joseph M. Cushing); MD 1864, p. 1290 (David Scott); MD 1864, p. 1291 (Joseph B. Pugh); MD 1864, p. 1291 (John L. Thomas Jr.); MD 1864, p. 1292 (George W. Sands); MD 1967–68, p. 1971 (Addie J. Key); MD 1967–68, p. 1972 (Lloyd Taylor); MD 1967–68, p. 1973 (James V. Bennett); MD 1967–68, p. 2025 (Elsbeth Bothe); MA 1853, 2:274 (Moses Bates Jr.); MA 1853, 2:274 (George Hood); MA 1853, 2:275 (Edward L. Keyes); MI 1835, pp. 268, 270–71, 271–72 (Ross Wilkins); MI 1835, p. 271 (Ezra Convis); MI 1850, p. 475 (Isaac Crary); MI 1850, p. 476 (D. C. Walker); MI 1850, p. 476 (Joseph Bagg); MI 1850, pp. 476–77 (A. H. Hanscom); MI 1867, 2:293 (Lorenzo Alexander); MI 1867, 2:294 (Eugene Pringle); MI 1867, 2:294 (Cyrus Luce); MT 1889, p. 360 (C. R. Middleton); MT 1889, pp. 360–61 (William Andrews Clark); MT 1889, p. 362 (Walter A. Burleigh); MT 1971–72, p. 392 (Mark Etchart); MT 1971–72, pp. 395, 397 (Bruce M. Brown); MT 1971–72, p. 397 (Lyman W. Choate); MT 1971–72, p. 397 (Robert Lee Kelleher); ND 1971–72, p. 769 (James O'Toole); PA 1872–73, 2:52–53 (Samuel Wherry); PA 1872–73, 2:74 (David Craig); PA 1872–73, 2:79 (Samuel Minor); TX 1875, p. 258 (J. W. Ferris); TX 1875, pp. 258, 260 (W. L. Crawford); TX 1974, pp. 512, 516 (James A. Mattox); TX 1974, p. 516 (Samuel W. Hudson, III); TX 1974, p. 521 (Matt Garcia); TX 1974, p. 522 (Dorothy J. Miller); TX 1974, p. 526 (George Leland); TX 1974, p. 527 (A. R. Schwartz); TX 1974, pp. 537–38 (Craig A. Washington); TX 1974, p. 562 (Jack C. Ogg).

62. See the comments of George Thacher in the Maine Convention of 1819, who asked: “A voter being charged at an election with having been convicted, &c., how shall it be tried?” ME 1819–20, p. 123; and Cyrus Luce in the Michigan Convention of 1867, who complained that “it will make the inspectors of elections the judges of whether a crime is an infamous crime or not.” MI 1867, 2:294.

63. In this regard, although Keyssar concluded from his review of several criminal disenfranchisement debates that “rarely, however, were objections voiced to the principle of disenfranchisement in either legislatures or constitutional conventions” (The Right to Vote, 162), a comprehensive examination of the state convention debates indicates that the principle of criminal disenfranchisement has been frequently and heavily contested.

64. MA 1853, 2:275.

65. MD 1967–68, p. 1972.

66. PA 1872–73, 2:52.

67. MI 1850, p. 475.

68. MD 1864, p. 1291.

69. MT 1971–72, p. 392.

70. MI 1850, pp. 476–77.

71. MD 1864, p. 1292.

72. PA 1872–73, 2:74.

73. TX 1974, p. 516.