In a waiting room inside the Jefferson County Jail, in the foothills West of Denver, a few incarcerated people in gray uniforms are filling out paperwork to vote.
A sheriff’s deputy brings them to a neighboring room to check in with election volunteers. Behind a folding table, Kyle Giddings looks up their case history on a laptop and asks for their home addresses to determine what ballots they should get.
“He is good and eligible to vote,” said Giddings, the civic engagement coordinator at the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, as he looks over one voter’s forms.
The laws about when people with felony convictions can vote again vary by state. In Colorado, they can vote after being released from jail or prison. So, Giddings makes sure the interested voters aren’t currently serving time for a felony.
However, most of the roughly half a million people in jails across the country have not lost the right to vote. They’re awaiting trial, meaning they haven’t been found guilty of a crime, or they're serving misdemeanor sentences. But very few people in jail cast ballots.
About 900 people in the Jefferson County Jail were allowed to vote in the 2022 midterms, yet only three actually did.
Nine years ago, Giddings was incarcerated in this very jail.
“I dealt with addiction for years and finally it all caught up to me,” he said.
It was the lead up to the 2016 election, and he was talking about it with others in his pod.
“They just assumed they could never vote again,” he said. “It was kind of in that moment that I realized that this is work that needs to be done.”
Aside from misinformation about eligibility, there are numerous other barriers to voting from jail. Often, you need to switch your home address to the jail to receive an absentee ballot, which can be further complicated if you’ve never registered to vote before. To fill out the ballot you might need to ask permission to use a pen – considered contraband. Then, you need to navigate the jail mail system to return your ballot on time. The rules and protocols can differ in each jail.
That’s why The Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition helped pass a state law this year to reduce those obstacles. The law requires all county jails in the state to stand up in-person voting for at least six hours. This is the first election it’s in effect.
In his pod, Jesus Rodriguez studied Colorado’s information booklet on ballot measures. He even recited it to a neighbor who isn't able to read. But when he woke up on the morning of election day inside the jail, he wasn’t sure if he was going to vote. He didn’t know whether he was eligible to cast a ballot.
“Somebody was like, ‘Why don’t you just go check,?’” Rodriguez said.
It turned out he was eligible. Rodriguez had never voted before.
“I felt like my voice didn't matter because I've been incarcerated multiple times; I've lived a hectic lifestyle,” he said.
When Rodriguez entered the voting room, an election volunteer handed him a ballot. He sat down at a gray desk with partitions on both sides. When he was done, he stuffed the ballot in a yellow bag, and a deputy escorted him out of the room. He said he’s proud he voted.
“It made me feel really good to know my opinion matters in this situation,” Rodriguez said.
Many consider jail-based polling places the best way to eliminate the hurdles people in jail face to voting. Yet just a handful of jails around 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, the Prowers County Sheriff and the president of the association, said the group wasn’t trying to block anyone from voting, but it thought the old system was working and the new one could mean more work and money, especially for smaller counties.
“We felt that it may create undue stress on certain agencies that didn’t need it because they were probably already allowing inmates to vote,” he said.
Yet advocates say the extremely low voter participation in jails across the country leaves room for improvement. In Arizona, they’re working to help people navigate their eligibility and polling them on whether they’ve received accurate voting information from elections offices.
In Nevada, a new state law requires jails to put into writing a plan to ensure that qualified inmates can register to vote and cast a ballot. As a result of the law, the Clark County Detention Center set up a polling place for the first time during the June primary. During the general election, it’s holding two days of early voting and election day voting inside the jail.
In Jefferson County, Colo., 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 mix of those who cast ballots in-person and who voted as part of a separate initiative where elections officials drop off ballots and sheriff's deputies return them.
“This is just one more step in making sure that everyone who’s eligible to vote actually gets to vote,” said Gonzalez. “Our democracy is just so much stronger when we have everyone’s voices.”
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 across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
