For the first time (during the 2012 election), African-Americans voted two percent higher than whites, according to an article by the Huffington Post, citing a recent U.S. Census Bureau report.
The increase in electoral participation between 1996 and 2012 reflects 66 percent of eligible African-Americans voting, compared to 64 percent of whites, the report said.
In 1996, whites had almost an eight-point margin, according to Census Bureau numbers.
“[B]lack voter turnout has been rising steadily over the past five election cycles, and is now nearly 25 percent higher than in 1996,” the Post reports.
However, according to the report, one out of every five black adults is ineligible to vote.
The report estimates there are 5.8 million adults excluded from voting in state and national elections because of a felony conviction—2.2 million are African-Americans.
“Approximately one in 31 American adults is under criminal justice control,” according to a recent Journal of Prisoners on Prison. “Such figures disproportionately impact minority populations resulting in one in 27 Hispanics, and one in 11 blacks under the supervision of the state. If current trends continue, one in three black males can expect to be imprisoned in their lifetime.”
“I think there are too many people in jail for too long and for not necessarily good reasons,” said U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, in a recent speech before the American Bar Association.
If the lost black votes were factored into the black electoral participation it “produces a turnout figure up to 72 percent of the eligible adult population,” the Post reports.
The criminal justice system’s racial inequalities contribute to the high rate of African-American disenfranchisement when compared to other groups, the newspaper said.
Reforms in the law would increase the number of African-American’s participation in the election process if their voting rights were restored, the report claims.
The number of disenfranchised would-be voters will further determine “the composition of the electorate in coming years,” according to the report.
These potential voters are men and women who will have to work and pay taxes, but where voting is concerned, they have the status of second-class citizens, the report concludes.
In her book, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander illustrates the impact of post-incarceration: “Upon release, ex-offenders are discriminated against, legally, for the rest of their lives… They are members of America’s new undercaste.”
