Registering Returning Citizens to Vote: A Field Experiment in North Carolina
Name
RegisteringReturningCitizens_JOPaccept_May2025forweb.pdf
Size
1.9 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
50056e65ce25f7c4b6890c23ed2d7e1d
Author(s)
Harris, Allison
Walker, Hannah
White, Ariel
Doleac, Jennifer
Eckhouse, Laurel
Foster-Moore, Eric
Date Issued
2025
Journal
The Journal of Politics
Publisher
University of Chicago Press
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Millions of people in the U.S. are eligible to vote despite past felony convictions, but their participation rates are extremely low. This article reports the results of a randomized controlled trial that encouraged people with convictions to register to vote in North Carolina in 2020. We use a novel approach to identify and contact this population, combining administrative and commercial data, and are able to identify a much larger sample than earlier studies, allowing us to examine previously-unobserved heterogeneity in this group's responsiveness to outreach. We find that, on average, our treatments increased voter registration by 0.8 percentage points (12%), and voter turnout by 0.5 percentage points (11%). We do not find evidence that effects vary with mailer content. The treatment has no effect on a comparison group of people without convictions who live in the same neighborhoods. We demonstrate how deeplymarginalized people can re-enter political life, with democratic and policy implications.
Subjects
Criminal justice
voter registration
field experiment
GOTV
felon disenfranchisement 1
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1086/740019
