The Wire

With just a week to go things are hotting up in the race for the next US president. Unlike Australia, voting is not compulsory – however, some people won’t even get to choose between Bush and Kerry at all. There are currently about 5 million people – 2 million of those are African Americans – who can’t cast their vote in the US. The reason they can’t vote is because they’ve been convicted of a crime, and are either serving a sentence, on parole, or on probation. But in some states even if you were convicted of a crime 20 years ago, you still can’t vote. Chris Uggen Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota, believes this has a great impact on the outcome of the US election.

Chris Uggen – felon disenfranchisement