This Article was written as part of a symposium on enhancing civil and constitutional rights through state and local action. The article analyzes the legal, political, and policy dimensions of state level efforts to restore voting rights for persons with felony convictions through popular initiatives and state legislation, and civil rights litigation. The article analyzes recent progress on felon voting rights restoration across several states, highlighting the variety of strategies and institutional mechanisms that have been utilized by voting rights and civil rights groups and other organizations through legislative and executive processes. It also analyzes recent federal court litigation challenging felony disenfranchisement in Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama—states that continue to disenfranchise large numbers of persons with felony convictions even after their release from prison.  Recent federal court litigation in Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama illustrates the latest litigation strategies and approaches for challenging existing felony disenfranchisement regimes, including wealth-based equal protection, Twenty-Fourth Amendment poll tax claims, procedural due process claims, and structural race-based equal protection claims.

This Article makes several contributions. First, the Article analyzes the latest wave of state restrictions on voting rights of persons with felony convictions within a broader historical context and suggests these recent restrictions, like earlier iterations of felon disenfranchisement, are yet another form of circumvention of constitutional commitments to fundamental rights and equality. Many states continue to use new forms of restrictions in the form of legal financial obligation (LFO) requirements, vague and arbitrary laws and categorization of crimes, dysfunctional administrative processes including slow and inefficient review boards, and poorly administered data and information practices that make it difficult to ascertain voter eligibility. Second, the Article analyzes how recent state level reforms restoring voting rights of persons with felony convictions illustrate the need to look beyond conventional partisan or blue-red state divisions, as some progress has been made in conservative states with Republican majorities.  By analyzing state political dynamics and particular institutional structures of governance in the regulation of voter qualifications, the Article reveals that some progress on voting rights restoration is possible, even in states with Republican majorities or Republican leadership. Third, the Article traces recent litigation strategies for challenging the latest wave of voting rights restrictions on persons with felony convictions in federal court and critically examines federal court decisions rejecting claims and arguments based on race and wealth-based discrimination under equal protection, and procedural due process claims challenging state administrative processes. Based on this analysis, the Article highlights the significant challenges and obstacles facing voting rights litigation, and the need for broader strategies related to administrative reform and transparency initiatives, and political mobilization at the federal and state level.