Get out the vote, in jail
In Pa., most inmates can cast ballots; officials are making sure they know
When inmates at the Northampton County Jail switch on the electronic tablets they use to access reading material, they’re greeted with instructions for registering to vote and requesting a mail-in ballot. During the months leading up to an election, fliers with similar messages are posted around the Easton facility.
At Lehigh County Jail in Allentown, posters reminding inmates of their right to vote, as well as important election deadlines, are hung in every housing unit, county spokesperson Laura Grammes said. Caseworkers keep voter registration forms on hand, and assist prisoners through the process of requesting an absentee ballot.
“Once the inmate receives the absentee ballot in the mail, they then complete the form in private, and return it by mail to the address provided,” Grammes said.
Helping county jail inmates, who are almost always eligible to vote in Pennsylvania, exercise their right to take part in an election has long been the practice in the Lehigh Valley, said Edward Sweeney, a jail consultant and former Lehigh County director of corrections.
Since at least the 1980s, Sweeney said, jail officials have made sure voter information was in prisoners’ handbooks and staff were educated.
“We had a bit of an epiphany about trying to get out in front of that and put processes in place,” Sweeney recalled. “You at least have to be in a position to be prepared to respond if someone were to ask.”
Education is key to stopping what the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative called widespread “de facto disenfranchisement” of jail inmates nationwide in a recent report. Researchers found that numerous factors,
including misinformation about eligibility, have sown confusion in jails. Many people, including the inmates themselves, don’t realize that people in jail can vote.
In Pennsylvania, nearly all of the approximately 37,000 people incarcerated in county jails are permitted to cast a ballot. That includes people awaiting trial for felonies or misdemeanors, those serving time for misdemeanors and inmates whowill be released by Election Day.
People serving time for misdemeanors in state prisons mayalso vote, but those incarcerated for felonies may not. This includes prisoners completing a felony sentence at a halfway house.
People convicted of violating any provision of the Pennsylvania Election Code within the last four years are also barred from voting.
In the past, people who were released from prison after being convicted of a felony were banned from registering to vote in Pennsylvania for five years. That changed in 2000, when the Commonwealth Court ruled that the law governing whether people convicted of a felony could vote was unconstitutional.
The average jail stay in the United States is three to four weeks, or until most inmates can post bail. Prison Policy researchers found time to be a factor in whymany inmates missed voting deadlines. Mail-in ballots sent to a jail were unlikely to make their way to an inmate at their home address.
Rules about what address an inmate can use to vote vary by state. In Pennsylvania, incarcerated people must use a home address but can list a jail as a place to have mail delivered. That makes it difficult to estimate how many jail inmates voted in past elections, Lehigh County Chief Clerk of Elections Timothy Benyo said.
Spurred by the national criminal justice reform movement, some communities are taking steps to make sure more inmates are able to participate in the upcoming election, according to The Sentencing Project, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit.
Massachusetts jails, for example, consider inmates to be “specially qualified,” meaning they don’t have to register before completing an absentee ballot. Jails in Chicago, Los Angeles and the District of Columbia set up polling places in some facilities, according to the Sentencing Project.
Philadelphia jails were singled out by the researchers as well. In a May report, the Sentencing Project highlighted the efforts of the Philadelphia Department of Prisons, where staff at the city’s four jails provide approximately 4,000 inmates with voter information.
This is done through public service announcements on closed-circuit television and from visiting social workers. The jail’s Community Justice and Outreach Department coordinates with the city commissioners’ office to make sure every inmate who is eligible for a mail-in ballot gets one.
Charitable organizations, including Jewish Employment and Vocational Services, also help Philadelphia inmates get voting materials, though most outside groups have been restricted from visiting jails during the pandemic.
Sweeney, who worked in Lehigh County’s correctional system for 30 years before starting his consulting firm in 2017, said he did not recall any advocacy groups visiting the jail to drum up support for causes or candidates.
Community organizer Ashleigh Strange, of Lehigh Valley Stands Up, which helped organize an event Tuesday outside the Lehigh County Government Center to encourage people to vote, was also unaware of any Lehigh Valley groups working specifically to educate prisoners.
Kimberly Makoul, Lehigh County’s chief public defender, said she was unaware of any complaints from clients who believed they’d been denied the right to vote while in jail.
Makoul said she was pleased with the steps Lehigh County jail staff have taken to educate those behind bars.
“I think a lot of people, and even many inmates, think that they don’t get to vote because they’re in jail, when that just isn’t true,” she said.
Morning Call reporter Laurie Mason Schroeder can be reached at lmason@mcall.com