In the 2004 presidential election, 4,686,539 Americans—a population greater than the city of Los Angeles—were barred from the polls. In a country that has extended suffrage to virtually every other class of citizen, ex-felons are the sole segment of our population deemed unworthy to exercise what the Supreme Court has called "the right preservative of all other rights," the right to vote.

The Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons provides a comprehensive overview of the history, nature, and far-reaching sociological and political consequences of denying ex-felons the right to vote. Readers learn state practices in Florida and Ohio during the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections; arguments that have been used in court houses, legislatures, and the press to justify such practices; and attempts to reverse legislation through state and federal governments. In a timely appendix to the 2004 election, Elizabeth Hull makes her case that the battle for civil rights will not be won unless ex-felons, who have fulfilled their obligations to society, are restored the same rights afforded all other American citizens.

Elizabeth A. Hull is Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University, Newark. Professor Hull has written numerous articles on the constitutional rights of women, minorities, and non-citizens, and two books: Without Justice for All: The Constitutional Rights of Aliens and Taking Liberties: National Barriers to the Free Flow of Ideas.

"Elizabeth Hull brings together reports from a wide variety of scholarly disciplines. The Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons includes material from public law, political philosophy, history, sociology, legislative politics, and electoral analysis; its spatial perspectives include the states, the nation, foreign countries, and the international community. This comprehensive combination of diverse literatures and perspectives make this book the basic guide to contemporary scholarship on this subject of emerging policy significance."—Gerald Pomper, Eagleton Institute of Politics

"Dr. Hull provides a thorough and compelling discussion of what threatens to be the major civil rights crisis of the 21st Century—the disfranchisement of nearly 5 million of our neighbors and co-workers, predominantly black and brown, because of conviction of crime. Indeed, felon disfranchisement has sometimes been referred to as the last vestige of slavery in the United States. As a result of racial profiling and the discriminatory operation of the criminal justice system, people of color are investigated, arrested, convicted—and thereby disfranchised—at rates far disproportionate to their numbers in the population or their propensity to commit crime. The impact on the political power of the minority community is nothing short of devastating. Dr. Hull analyzes this phenomenon from an historical, philosophical and legal perspective, and explains its political consequences, with particular attention to the 2000 presidential election."—Frank Askin, Professor of Law, Rutgers University School of Law, Newark, and General Counsel, American Civil Liberties Union

"This is a marvelous book. Hull has written a rich historical narrative bolstered by the kind of contemporary salient data usually absent in discussions of this type. The effects of 'disenfranchising' nearly one-third of black men in the United States at some time in their lives are not confined to them alone. The numbers are so daunting that they carry the potential for deeply wounding our democracy. One can only hope that Hull's book gets the widest possible circulation—particularly in the white community. Those who most suffer from our present laws already know whereof Hull speaks."—Jerome Miller, author of Search & Destroy: African American Males in the Criminal Justice System