Voting Rights in Prisons Pt. 1

When learning about current debates about voting rights for incarcerated Americans, there are two main subjects of discussion: voting rights for people in prison who have not forfeited their right to vote, and voting rights for those who have.

First, let’s learn about incarcerated Americans who still have their right to vote, which varies by state. No matter which state you are in, however, pretrial incarceration does not restrict voting rights. Unless you are in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Utah, South Carolina, or Kentucky, you will not be disenfranchised with a misdemeanor either (in New Hampshire, an election or bribery-related misdemeanor could also restrict voting rights). We have already covered most incarcerated Americans (usually about ⅔ of prisoners are there because they await trial). (By the way, I learned about all the different voting rights laws by state from this document.) 

So before we learn about the debates surrounding the disenfranchised prisoners, it’s important to know that they only make up a small part of the incarcerated population. The problem that affects many more inmates than disenfranchisement laws is what I have seen called “de facto disenfranchisement”---where people who are imprisoned are allowed to vote but still don’t because of all the obstacles to voting in the prison system.

How widespread is this issue? It’s hard to tell. I had trouble finding studies of how many people in prison voted; from what I did find, de facto disenfranchisement seems present across the country. In Maine and Vermont, two states where all inmates are eligible to vote, less than ten percent of them in both states actually exercised that right. Ohio jails reported even lower numbers, with just 8 of 1600 voting in a prison in Franklin County, which is 0.5% of the prison. About 66% of the eligible Americans voted in the 2020 election. Little is being reported on the problem, and what is out there points to a huge difference in voter turnout inside and outside of prisons. Next week we will learn about why this might be, and steps to fix it.