As November 5th approached, American voters in St Andrews found themselves bombarded with information on how to check their registration status and ensure they could vote from an ocean away. Non-partisan organizations have increased their efforts to make United States citizens aware of their options from abroad, as not fulfilling one’s civic duty has become a matter of shame for many Americans. Despite the voting resources provided to Americans abroad, these efforts have seldom been replicated for another group of Americans— those detained in jails across the country, awaiting trial.
In the United States, it is common practice for citizens who have committed a felony to be stripped of their right to vote in elections. Whether this is a permanent change in the effectuation of their citizenship or a right that can be reinstated differs state by state, and a minor few regions— Vermont, Maine, and the District of Columbia— still guarantee the right to vote for felons, even when incarcerated. However in most states, citizens in prison for any crime, misdemeanor to felony, are constitutionally barred from voting.
Voter suppression in the United States is intricately tied with racial discrimination present in sentencing and policing, leading to the disproportionate representation of Black and Latino citizens within the criminal justice system. Petty drug charges, implicit discriminatory treatment by law enforcers as well as judges, and inordinate life sentences have all led to people of color being overrepresented in prisons, and therefore stripped of their right to vote, even temporarily, as a community. While it is true that unfair convictions are a driver of modern voter suppression, one’s right to vote is often lost before a trial ever occurs. Hundreds of thousands of citizens who have not yet been convicted but are imprisoned while awaiting trial have their voting rights restricted as though they were already criminals. In pretrial detention, these citizens are legally innocent and still retain their right to vote in elections, yet are denied meaningful access to voting opportunities. Most of these people are imprisoned in local jails, unable to pay the bail (a median amount of $10,000) that allows them to await trial from their homes, and during election seasons, allows them to visit polling centers. Local and federal jails are the institutions in which modern voter suppression thrives and further exacerbates its intersection with race and class.
Not only are there physical barriers preventing inmates from voting, but there are educational challenges too. A major issue in voting from jail arises from pretrial detainees not knowing where they stand in terms of their voting rights. With no access to technology, detainees must rely on the jail’s administration to provide them with accurate information regarding their rights, voter registration forms, and requests for mail-in ballots— all of which can be lost or delayed as each request moves through the bureaucratic process. The confusion regarding the voting rights they are entitled to often causes people in jail to forgo voting altogether.
Having the right to vote is one thing— having the ability to vote is another. Despite the affirmation that eligible, detained voters have the right to vote, no court has mandated jails to provide ballot access. Whether this access ranges from mail-in ballots sent to county jails or dedicated time to visit polling facilities, very few accommodations are made for unconvicted detainees. It is important to note, however, that this disregard for incarcerated voters is seeing a meaningful shift. In Nevada, a recent bill is “requiring a person who administers a county or city jail to establish a policy that ensures a person who is detained in the jail may register to vote and vote in an election,” securing the protection of voter’s rights from jail. The bill, Assembly Bill 286, reiterates the legal right to vote, and lays out key logistical requirements for each county jail to meet in order to ensure this right. What the bill does not do is constrain any Nevada county to a specific plan for voting administration from jails, as spelled out in Section 7 of the bill. Any approach, as long as it is accurately documented and meets the criteria of AB286, is a viable option— a leniency that has allowed jails to form voting plans that meet their specific needs and structure, but can simultaneously lead to disorganized and ineffective procedures.
AB286 was ratified at the beginning of 2024, and was actually put into practice during the June 2024 primaries. The bill’s ambiguous language began to show its weakness after polling data was collected from Nevada’s jails. Clark County jail installed an on-site polling booth to encourage detainees to exercise their right to vote, while Elko County’s sheriff department implemented an ineffective procedure that ultimately did not result in any registrations or ballot requests from current inmates. The varied execution of AB286 makes it clear that the most effective way to actualize the right to vote from jail is to provide registration and voting access to voters on-site— in other words, jail-based polling sites where detainees can cast their ballots in person rather than maneuvering the challenges of registration barriers and of requesting mail-in ballots to jails. Rather than discarding AB286, these past elections have served as an important reminder that specificity of language and implementation of the law is key to producing consistent, positive results.
AB286 is not the only push reiterating the importance of making voting accessible to eligible, incarcerated voters. Senate Bill 2090 in Illinois is another important legislative act protecting voting rights from jail, and organizations such as the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, ACLU of Southern California, the Anti-Recidivism Coalition and Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of Errants have all reaffirmed the need for programs in their respective states or counties to facilitate the voting process from jails.
Despite its noticeable flaws, the protection of voter rights across a multitude of spaces and circumstances is a necessary reiteration. It also serves as an entry point for the discussion of allowing convicts their right to vote, a topic enmeshed in the same discourses of inequality and voter suppression, yet with different implications regarding citizenship and prison reform in the U.S.. The protection of incarcerated people who are innocent in the eyes of the law is a trend that pushes the U.S. closer to the lofty ideals of fairness and justice that it so proudly makes claim to. While crucial, the implications of AB286 reach far beyond individual liberties— elections are too often won on a couple thousand votes to disregard the possibility that in the jail cells of our country lie potential victories.
Image by Bain News Service via Library of Congress