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Published
October 15, 2003 |
FELVAR |
The Republican Party's tough-on-crime position may be paying off in unexpected ways: A recent review of U.S. elections concluded that if felons could vote, Al Gore would be in the White House and Democrats would have ruled the U.S. Senate since 1986.
Sociologists Christopher Uggen, at the University of Minnesota, and Jeff Manza, at Northwestern University in Chicago, found that this country's high crime rate and laws that forbid felons -- and in some cases, ex-felons -- to vote have had an effect on elections.
Uggen's and Manza's report is published in the Summer 2003 edition of Contexts, an American Sociological Association magazine. They calculated that the felons banned from voting are more than 2 percent of the country's potential voters. They examined the voting records of other Americans with similar backgrounds -- such as race, education and marital status.
Among their conclusions: If Florida had allowed ex-convicts to vote, Gore would have beat George Bush by at least 30,000 votes.
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