Kevin T. Morris, PhD
I'm a Senior Research Fellow and Voting Policy Scholar at the Brennan Center, where my work focuses on voting rights, election administration, and the effects of the criminal legal system on political participation. My scholarly work has been published in journals like the American Political Science Review and the Journal of Politics, and my research has been covered widely in local and national outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and MSNBC. My work has been cited by state and federal courts, including the US Supreme Court, and my Congressional testimony has informed legislative debates about the Voting Rights Act.
Along with Michael G. Miller, I am the author of the forthcoming book An American Problem: The States, the Courts, and Voting Rights. The book traces the development of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, with particular attention to the "preclearance condition" embedded in Sections 4 and 5. Preclearance — which required some jurisdictions to prove that changes to their elections systems would not be discriminatory before they could go into effect — was suspended in 2013 in a Supreme Court case called Shelby County v. Holder. Our project documents the myriad ways that this disastrous opinion has led the United States away from a real, multiracial democracy. An American Problem will be published in 2026 by Princeton University Press.
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I hold a BA in Economics from Boston College, a Master's of Urban Planning from NYU, and a PhD in Sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center.
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