Registered but Not Voting: Felon Voting Rights Restoration and the Limits of Civic Re-Inclusion

Abstract

Does restoring felon voting rights increase Black political participation beyond the directly affected population? I exploit the staggered adoption of felon voting rights restoration laws across 22 US states from 1996 to 2024 using CPS Voting Supplement data and a difference-in-differences design with the estimator. Rights restoration increases Black voter registration by 2.3 percentage points relative to White registration (p$<$0.001), but the Black-White turnout gap widens by 3.7 percentage points (p$=$0.015). A triple-difference exploiting within-race variation in felony risk finds no significant community-level spillovers. These results suggest that restoration removes a legal barrier to registration but does not produce the broader civic re-engagement predicted by "civic chill" theories. The divergence between registration and turnout effects implies that formal inclusion without supportive mobilization infrastructure is insufficient to close racial participation gaps.