Nicole Lewis and Andrew R. Calderon
The Marshall Project
Only a fraction of the thousands of formerly incarcerated people whose voting rights were restored in time for the 2020 election made it back on to the voter rolls in four key states — Nevada, Kentucky, Iowa and New Jersey, a Marshall Project analysis found.
Yet none of the states analyzed registered more than 1 in 4 eligible voters who were formerly incarcerated. That's significantly lower than the registration rate among the general public, where almost 3 in 4 eligible voters registered in each state.
In Iowa — the last state with a lifetime ban on voting for people with felony convictions — almost 5,000 of the estimated 45,000 affected people had registered. Gov. Kim Reynolds signed an executive order lifting the ban in August of 2020.