Kareemah Hanifa just registered to vote for the first time in her life. As a juvenile, Hanifa, now 48, was sentenced to life in prison and spent 26 years incarcerated before she was released on parole in 2019.
“I’m feeling nervous, I’m also feeling anxious and a little bit scared,” Hanifa said just before she went into register at the Cobb County Elections and Registration office in Marietta.
She brought all her documentation, including her passport, driver’s license, a bill with her address on it, and a Certificate of Sentence Completion to the office. In the end all she needed was her passport and driver’s license.
It wasn’t until November 2024, when Hanifa’s sentence was commuted by the Georgia Pardons and Parole Board, that she finally became eligible to vote. That’s because Georgia has some of the most stringent laws in the nation restricting people with a felony conviction from voting even while they are on probation or parole.
Georgia’s felony disenfranchisement rules deny voting rights to over a quarter of a million citizens, approximately 3.25% of the state’s voting-age population, according to the Sentencing Project. That’s almost twice as much as the 1.7% of voting-age people who are unable to vote nationally.
For Black Georgians, the numbers are even worse. More than 5% of Georgia’s Black voting-age citizens cannot vote, and Black people are about three times more likely to be disenfranchised than white people.
While Georgia’s laws are strict, misinformation about who is eligible to vote can create unnecessary barriers for those whose voting rights have been restored. Anyone who is no longer incarcerated, on probation, or on parole can register to vote in Georgia.
In 2024, Capital B Atlanta spoke with two formerly incarcerated women who had their voter registrations improperly canceled by election officials in Fulton and Fayette counties who came across their past convictions.
Both women were able to have their registrations restored, but the Fayette County resident had to have the Georgia Justice Project, a nonprofit that supports formerly incarcerated people, send a letter to the elections board on her behalf before she could be added back to the voter rolls.
“It will feel like imposter syndrome,” Hanifa said, speaking about other people with a felony conviction who feel like they may never be able to vote. “But just remember that you do belong here and that your voice does count.”
The Georgia Justice Project’s executive director, Doug Ammar, estimated two years ago that there are 400,000 Georgians who have a previous felony conviction that are currently eligible to vote and 40,000 more who were sentenced under the state’s First Offender Act who never lost their right to vote.
For Hanifa, the hardest part of going from someone without voting rights to having them restored was psychological.
“I started to feel like, this is it,” she said, about being disenfranchised. “[But] it finally came into fruition. There are many portions of my life that don’t even feel real to me, you know. So this is amazing.”
Hanifa is not new to this movement. She led the Inner-City Muslim Action Network’s No Taxation Without Representation campaign for four years after she was released from prison. The campaign focused on supporting legislation that would restore voting rights for thousands of Georgians and educating formerly incarcerated people on their voter eligibility status.
Now, Hanifa is the director of the Chillon Project, a prison education program at Life University, her alma mater.
Since her successful voter registration, Hanifa told Capital B Atlanta that she hopes to inspire other people with previous felony convictions to check their voter eligibility and register if they can.
“I feel accomplished. I feel amazing and I cannot wait to actually vote,” she said.
The voter registration deadline for the May 19 gubernatorial primary election is April 20. Voter registration status can be checked on the Georgia My Voter Page. New voters may register to vote at their county board of elections office or online by using a valid Georgia driver’s license.
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