Prof. David Mitchell was invited to deliver a public lecture, “Suppressing Citizen Voices?: The Impact of Felon Disenfranchisement and Voter ID Laws,” at Lafayette College on felon disenfranchisement and voter identification laws.
The topic of the talk was presented as follows: “Felon disenfranchisement laws deny the right to vote by stripping individuals of this fundamental right at the time of conviction and then by continuing to deny the restoration of the right until certain conditions have been met. Voter identification laws prevent the exercise of the right to vote by declaring who is eligible based upon whether they possess a valid form of identification. Regardless of the set of laws, countless citizens, and their communities, are being disenfranchised, rendering them invisible and voiceless. Or do these laws merely protect the purity of the ballot box?”