Impediments keep Black men from the polls in Georgia
/Black men vote at sharply lower rates than other groups in Georgia.
Only 63 percent of eligible black men in Georgia are registered to vote, compared to 76 percent of black women and 75 percent of whites;
Of those registered to vote, 70 percent of black men actually cast a ballot in the 2008 general election, compared to 80 percent of black women, 78 percent of white women and 76 percent of white men.
The difference in educational attainment between black men and black women is one reason, said Nancy Flake Johnson, president of the Urban League of Greater Atlanta, but another obstacle is the “disproportionately high” incarceration rates among black men.
The Sentencing Project’s 2004 report, The Vanishing Black Electorate: Felony Disenfranchisement in Atlanta, Georgia, supports that contention, showing a substantial portion of the lower African American male rate of participation was, in fact, a result of felony disenfranchisement policies.
Blacks in Georgia are 3.3 times as likely as whites to end up behind bars and those convicted of felonies lose their right to vote until they have completed their entire sentences, including probation or parole. Of the more than 275,000 disenfranchised felons in Georgia, nearly 160,000 are black, according to the report State-Level Estimates of Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States, 2010, also from The Sentencing Project.
