Tennessee toughens voting rules for people with felony convictions

Tennessee’s confusing process for restoring voting rights has already come under considerable scrutiny. Photograph: The Washington Post/Getty Images

Tennessee, already one of the strictest and most complicated states in the country for voting rights restoration, has enacted a new policy that makes it nearly impossible for people with felony convictions to regain their right to vote.

Tennessee has one of the highest rates of disenfranchisement in the United States. More than 9% of the voting age population, or about 471,600 Tennesseans, cannot vote because of a felony conviction, according to a 2022 estimate by the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice non-profit. More than 21% of Black adults are disenfranchised.