Who Can Vote in a Presidential Election?

Not all Americans can vote — do you know who can’t?

What to know:

• Millions of Americans aren’t able to vote.
• African American and Latino populations are more likely to have lost the ability to vote than white Americans.
• Some groups won the right to vote after decades of activism — but do you know who’s still fighting?

Learn More about this cause:

Did you know millions of American citizens still can’t vote!?

Puerto Rico is a non-state territory of the United States. If you were born in Puerto Rico after 1940, you’re a US citizen, but the 3.5 million American residents of Puerto Rico still can’t vote in congressional or presidential elections. The same goes for residents of other US territories like American Samoa, Guam, the US Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands.

In 2016 The Sentencing Project published data showing that an additional 6.1 million felons were also disenfranchised, which means that these individuals lost the right vote despite being citizens. The data shows that 1 in 13 African Americans of voting age are disenfranchised, a rate more than four times greater than that of non-African Americans.

Voting is a right that should be extended to all citizens, but women, African-Americans, Asians, Latinos and Native Americans have all faced obstacles to voting. Women received the right to vote after a 100-year campaign, and Black Americans have endured violence and discrimination in protests for voting rights, which are still systemically curtailed to this day.

Every citizen who is unable to vote represents a lost voice — someone whose needs will not be represented fully by the elected government. This is not right and holds us all back from creating a more equal society.

Learn more about who can vote and who can’t  — take the quiz!