Colorado prisons are voting in person for this election after changing state law

In a waiting room inside the Jefferson County Jail in the foothills west of Denver, a few incarcerated men in gray uniforms fill out paperwork to vote.

A sheriff’s deputy brings them into an adjoining room to meet with election volunteers. Behind a folding table, Kyle Giddings looks up their case histories on a laptop and asks for their home addresses to determine which ballots they should receive.

“He’s good and eligible to vote,” said Giddings, civic engagement coordinator at Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalitionwhile looking over a voter’s forms.

The laws about when people with felony convictions can vote again varies by state. In Colorado, they can vote after being released from jail or prison. So Giddings makes sure that the voters concerned are not currently serving a felony sentence.

However, most of the roughly half a million people in prisons across the country have not lost their right to vote. They are awaiting trial, meaning they have not been found guilty of a crime or are serving a misdemeanor sentence. But very few people in prison voted.

About 900 people in the Jefferson County Jail were allowed to vote in the 2022 midterms, but only three did.

Nine years ago, Giddings was imprisoned in this very prison.

“I struggled with addiction for years and it finally caught up with me,” he said.

It was before the 2016 election and he was talking about it with others in his group.

“They assumed they would never be able to vote again,” he said. “At that point I realized this is a job that needs to be done.”

In addition to misinformation about eligibility, there are numerous other barriers to voting from prison. You often have to change your home address at the jail to receive an absentee ballot, which can be even more complicated if you’ve never registered to vote before. To complete the ballot paper you may need to ask permission to use a pen – considered contraband. You then have to navigate the mail system to return your ballot on time. Rules and protocols may differ in each prison.

That’s why the Colorado Coalition for Criminal Justice Reform helped adopt a state law this year to reduce these obstacles. The law requires all county jails in the state to vote in person for at least six hours. This is the first election in effect.

In his attic, Jesus Rodriguez studied Colorado’s information brochure on ballot measures. He even recited it to a neighbor who could not read. But when he woke up on Election Day morning in prison, he wasn’t sure if he was going to vote. He didn’t know if he was eligible to vote.

“Somebody said, ‘Why don’t you go check it out?'” Rodriguez said.

He was found to be eligible. Rodriguez had never voted before.

“I felt that my voice did not matter because I had been incarcerated several times; I lived a hectic lifestyle,” he said.

When Rodriguez entered the polling booth, an election volunteer handed him a ballot. He sat down at a gray desk with partitions on either side. When he finished, he stuffed the ballot into a yellow bag and a deputy escorted him out of the hall. He said he was proud to have voted.

“It made me feel really good to know that my opinion matters in this situation,” Rodriguez said.

Many believe that prison polling places are the best way to remove the obstacles that people in prison face in order to vote. However, only a few prisons across the country offer in-person voting. Colorado is the first state to require it in all counties.

However, not everyone was initially on board. The state sheriffs association opposed the law in the legislature. Sam Zordel, Prowers County Sheriff and president of the association, said the group was not trying to block anyone from voting, but he believed the old system was working and the new one could mean more work and money, especially for smaller counties . .

“We felt it might put undue stress on certain agencies that didn’t need it because they were probably already allowing inmates to vote,” he said.

However, advocates say the extremely low voter turnout in prisons across the country leaves room for improvement. In Arizona, they’re working to help people navigate their eligibility and question whether they’ve received accurate voting information from election offices.

In Nevada, a the new state law requires prisons to put a plan in writing to ensure that qualified inmates can register to vote and vote. Pursuant to the law, the Clark County Detention Center established a polling station for the first time during the June primary. During general elections, there are two days of early voting and election day voting in prison.

In Jefferson County, Colorado, Clerk Amanda Gonzalez, who oversees elections, has already noticed a difference. More than 300 people incarcerated in the jail have voted so far in this election — a combination of those who voted in person and who voted as part of a separate initiative where election officials drop off ballots and sheriff’s deputies return them.

“This is just one more step to make sure that everyone who is eligible to vote actually gets to vote,” Gonzalez said. “Our democracy is much stronger when we have everyone’s voice.”

This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations in the region. . Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.