Introduction The right to vote is generally accepted as a basic and essential element that serves to legitimize governance and assure stability within a democratic society by recognizing the dignity and equality of human beings to affect their own destinies (Piven and Cloward, 2002:2; Grant and Omdahl, 1993). Yet, in the United States today, more than four million Americans are disenfranchised, and therefore, prevented from voting in local, state, and federal elections (Mauer, 2002). According to Randall (1997), criminal law is the popular and designated tool of disenfranchisement used to exclude citizens convicted of a felon from exercising their right to vote. In a report compiled by Fellner and Mauer for The Sentencing Project (1998), it was stated that
