Credit: Philip Scott Andrews/The Washington Post/Getty

One out of every four African American voters is disenfranchised in the state of Kentucky, a higher rate than any other state, as a result of the state’s law barring people with felony convictions from voting, according to a new report from the Kentucky League of Women Voters released Tuesday.

Kentucky is one of three states that currently has a lifetime ban keeping people with felony convictions — also known as returning citizens — from voting, and the report found that the state ranks third in the United States in rate of disenfranchisement. Currently, more than 312,000 people in Kentucky are currently without ballot access, or one out of every 11 adults. (For context, nationally, just one in 40 people, about 2.5 percent of the country, are ineligible to vote due to felony convictions, including about 9.1 percent of African Americans.)

In 2016, lawmakers in Kentucky passed a bill that allowed some people in the state with low-level felony convictions to have their convictions expunged and right […]