Here’s why they did it.
According to the U.S. Census, in 2024, Alabama’s Black voter registration rate was 67.2%, while the white registration rate was 70.3%. Louisiana’s Black voter registration rate was 61.4 vs. 69.7% for whites. In Mississippi, 81.6% of Black people registered to vote, compared to 81.4% of white Mississippians. Tennessee was 64.5% Black vs. 77% white. In most of these states, the voter turnout rates usually mirror the registration rates.
While this may seem like white people vote more than Black Americans, these statistics are devised by comparing the voter-eligible population (the number of U.S. citizens over 18) to the people who are actually registered or turn out to vote. But if you include the number of Black people who can’t vote because of felony disenfranchisement laws, the Black people who are eligible to vote might actually outvote whites.
A new study on Alabama’s “moral turpitude” disenfranchisement law puts it more plainly.
The Alabama Reflector reports:
According to the study, Black men were disenfranchised at a rate of 22.4 citizens per 1,000 men of voting age. That is almost four times the rate for their white counterparts, whose rate was 6.7 citizens per 1,000.
The rate for disenfranchising Black women was 3.9 citizens per 1,000, almost twice the rate of white women, whose disenfranchisement rate was 2.1 citizens per 1,000 white women.
Counties with significant Black populations had some of the highest Black disenfranchisement rates and largest racial disparities in disenfranchisement. Seven of the 10 counties with the highest rates of disenfranchised voters are within the Black Belt.
That’s why the felony disenfranchisement map looks like this:
They have to cheat to win.
Because they know who has the power.
Today’s Reading List
Alabama’s Moral Turpitude Law Disproportionately Strips Black Citizens of Their Voting Rights by Richard Fording, Dori Miles and Maddie Minkoff
Is the South More Racist Than Other Parts of the US? by Michael Harriot
Counting the Votes: South Carolina's Stolen Election of 1876 by Ronald F. King
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