Memo: Missouri Rights Restoration Bill

Re: Missouri Rights Restoration Bill
To: Bob Libal and Nicole Porter, The Sentencing Project
From: Chris Uggen, with MayMay Seymour, Rob Stewart, Sarah Shannon, Ryan Larson
Date: 5/19/26

Thank you for reaching out to us regarding the bill to restore voting rights in Missouri to people currently serving probation and parole sentences. We understand that this bill bars people from voting while on parole or probation after conviction for specific crimes, including murder, child endangerment, first or second degree assault, burglary in the first degree, stalking, and incest. We write in reply to your May 13 email asking whether we could generate a new estimate on the numbers who remain disenfranchised under the new rights restoration framework” in Missouri.

Data and Assumptions

We do not have fine-grained offense data that would enable an authoritative count of the number of people included or excluded in the new bill, but I believe we can provide a helpful estimate of these populations using existing data sources. Based on preliminary analysis of mid-year 2025 data taken from the Missouri Department of Corrections Profile of the Institutional and Supervised Offender Population, we can estimate the number that would gain voting rights or remain disenfranchised. Here are the underlying data inputs we used to estimate the number affected in the table below:

• The Missouri parole population was 13,111 at midyear 2025. Of these, 3,970 had been convicted of violent, sex, and/or child abuse offenses. We exclude 912 people convicted of robbery from the violent total, since this offense is not specifically excluded from the bill. These figures suggest that rights would be restored for approximately 10,053 of the 13,111 people currently on parole (77%) and that approximately 3,058 (or 23%) would remain disenfranchised.
• The Missouri felony probation population was 38,964 at midyear 2025. Of these, 7,917 had been convicted of violent, sex, and/or child abuse offenses. These figures suggest that rights would be restored for approximately 31,047 people on probation (80%) and that approximately 7,917 (or 20%) would remain disenfranchised.
• Combining the parole and probation numbers to examine the total community supervision population, we therefore estimate that the bill would restore voting rights to approximately 41,100 (or 79% of the community supervision population) and that approximately 10,975 (or 21% of the community supervision population will remain disenfranchised.

We caution that these numbers may overstate or understate the number who remain disenfranchised but we hope that these figures are helpful in estimating the relative size of the affected populations.