Center for Public Integrity: Voters in jail face ‘de facto disenfranchisement’

Each election cycle, thousands of eligible voters are effectively disenfranchised because they sit in a jail cell.

Americans detained before trials are allowed to vote, a status affirmed by a 1974 Supreme Court case. As a matter of law, pretrial detainees are presumed innocent and retain the voting rights they had before being charged with a crime. Yet people in jail face significant, sometimes insurmountable obstacles to registering to vote and accessing a ballot.

Advocates say that this “de facto disenfranchisement” affects the majority of the roughly 445,000 people in American jails who have not been convicted of a crime.

Many are in jail simply because they can’t afford bail.

“That is creating a system where if you are rich enough, you can access your right to vote, because you’ll be able to get out of pretrial detention,” said Sylvia Albert of Common Cause. “And if you aren’t rich enough, then you can’t access your right to vote.”

The issue doesn’t only affect those held while awaiting trial. Nationally, about 100,000 people are serving sentences for misdemeanors in jails on any given day, the Prison Policy Initiative estimates. Depending on state laws, many of them retain their voting rights even while incarcerated.