People held in pretrial detention voting with the help of volunteers at Ordnance Road Correctional Center in Glen Burnie, Maryland. (Common Cause Maryland)
When Sascha Vanwilliams, a law student at the
City University of New York School of Law, learned that people held in detention — but not yet convicted of a crime — faced hurdles to voting even when legally eligible, he wondered what was happening inside his city's jails.
His inquiry with the city's Department of Correction yielded dozens of grievances filed either by detainees or on their behalf in recent years. They contained repeated pleas for registration forms, missing ballots and someone to help before time ran out.
"I have been accused of a crime. I have not been convicted of a crime," a person held at the Rikers Island jail complex said in an October 2024 grievance as the registration deadline approached, three weeks before the general election.
Another person held at Rikers said they had followed all the registration steps but never received a ballot.
"I did not get a ballot at all this year to vote," they complained the day after the election. "It is our civil right to vote."
For eligible people detained before trial across the country, the right to vote can depend on a chain of requests to the institution holding them. They need registration forms, ballot applications and election information they cannot go out and get themselves. A ballot must reach them, and someone must collect it and get it back to election officials before the deadline. Mail delays, missing paperwork or a request passed from one staff member to another can leave a person who has lost the freedom to leave jail unable to exercise a right they still possess.
"Imagine trying to fill out a registration form and you're prohibited from having a pen," Kate Uyeda, voting rights legal counsel at the
Campaign Legal Center, told Law360.
Zal Shroff, a professor at CUNY School of Law who previously supervised a jail voting project in Connecticut, said those barriers expose a gap between the country's commitment to voting rights and its treatment of people in custody.
"We say in the United States we care about the right to vote," Shroff said. "We really only care about the right to vote for certain people."
Government institutions have placed eligible voters beyond the reach of ordinary voting arrangements without adequately providing another way to participate, he said.
"It's a constitutional imperative that these folks with the right to vote have the access to vote," he said.
Across the country, election officials and advocates are working to ensure eligible voters can cast a ballot from jail. Colorado and Illinois' Cook County have brought in-person voting behind bars, while Massachusetts has charged specific officials to help those who are eligible to vote. Community groups in Boston, Houston and Maryland are helping people register and navigate the process.
Challenges remain. Wanda Bertram of the
Prison Policy Initiative said confusion about eligibility is compounded by practical barriers, including access to identification required under some states' voting laws. Her organization supports the idea of "a one-stop shop" inside jails where people can register and cast ballots.
"A jail polling place can't set itself up," she said. "Even a sheriff working very hard couldn't set one up on its own. You need the cooperation of people working in the election system."
Bob Libal, a senior campaign strategist at the Sentencing Project, a national criminal justice reform organization, said efforts to reach eligible voters in jail have expanded across the country since 2020, with participation challenging assumptions that people in custody are not interested in casting a vote.
"When eligible voters who are in jails or other detention centers are given the opportunity to vote, they very much want to participate," he said.
Asking for a Ballot
In New York, people awaiting trial and those serving misdemeanor sentences can vote if they otherwise meet the eligibility requirements. There are about 7,000 people detained at Rikers Island, most of whom are eligible to vote. The grievances Vanwilliams obtained describe people attempting to cast a vote, but failing for one reason or another.
On Election Day in 2024, a person held at Rikers Island's Rose M. Singer Center, a facility that houses female detainees, reported that completed absentee ballots were still awaiting collection.
"Today is Election Day and they have not come to get the absentee ballots," the grievance entry read.
Advocates working to improve voting access in New York City jails say requests and ballots can fall through the cracks as they pass between the DOC and the city's Board of Elections. Volunteers' ability to help also depends on the availability of staff escorts and whether visits coincide with detainees' meals or other activities.
Rigodis Appling, a Legal Aid Society attorney involved in the campaign for jail voting, said volunteers hear from people who registered but never received ballots. Her coalition wants a polling site inside the jails.
"Tons of effort is being poured in, and very few people are actually casting ballots," she said.
Appling argued that the BOE could establish a jail polling site if it chose to, pointing to programs in other jurisdictions.
"It's a matter of will," she said.
Patrick Gallahue, a spokesman for the DOC, did not address the individual grievances reviewed by Law360, instead pointing to an April 14 testimony where department officials described year-round voter education, registration drives and staff coordination of hand delivery of forms and completed ballots to the BOE.
Nell Colón, the DOC's deputy commissioner of programs and community partnerships, said in the testimony that the department's role is facilitating access, while the BOE administers elections.
At a March 2025 City Council hearing, Michael Ryan, executive director of the city's Board of Elections, said the board had received 1,080 applications for the previous November's general election and issued 977 ballots. Of those, 546 were received and counted, while 375 never came back. The figures do not establish why those ballots were not returned.
In an email to Law360, BOE Deputy Executive Director Vincent Ignizio provided the testimony submitted by him and Ryan for the April 2026 hearing. The board maintained that state law permits only absentee voting for people in custody and that establishing jail polling sites would require state legislative action. It also described ongoing collaboration with the Legal Aid Society and the jail-voting coalition.
Ignizio did not directly answer questions about missing ballots or any preparations underway for the November election
Finding Where the System Fails
In Massachusetts, litigation by voting rights groups secured an overdue report on jail voting following the 2024 elections. The reporting requirement was part of the state's 2022 VOTES Act, which also imposed duties intended to help eligible incarcerated people participate.
The report identified 4,647 eligible incarcerated voters for the November 2024 election, of whom 230 had ballots returned and counted — just under 5%. In the September primary, 58 ballots were counted among 5,590 eligible incarcerated voters, about 1%.
Brooke Simone of
Lawyers for Civil Rights said the findings helped identify failures involving delivery, late receipt, signatures and ballot envelopes, giving organizers a basis for seeking changes.
"Now that we know the scale of the problem, we can start figuring out how to solve the problem," Simone said.
Simone said litigation also secured commitments to improve population reporting and data collection.
Debra O'Malley, a spokesperson for Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin, said ballot-envelope errors can also occur with voters who are not in custody and that undelivered ballots can reflect voters entering or leaving correctional facilities.
For organizers working inside Boston facilities, the effort begins well before a ballot arrives.
In a recent call with Law360, Dani Scheer, who coordinates jail voting volunteers for Empowering Descendant Communities to Unlock Democracy, described weekly visits to Suffolk County Jail, commonly called Nashua Street Jail, and the Suffolk County House of Correction, along with civic education classes. The group helps people register and works through election information so they understand the decisions a ballot asks them to make.
Some detained people approach immediately, eager to register. Others watch the volunteers return for months before deciding to participate, Scheer said. The advocates' consistency helps build trust and rapport with the people inside and overcome skepticism about programs that "come in a few times and never come back again," Scheer said.
"People do care," she said. "There's this false narrative that people who are locked up don't care about the elections or participating, they don't even know what's going on. But they do."
Franklin Hobbs, a pastor who has helped lead jail voting efforts in Suffolk County for more than two decades, said people in custody should retain a voice in their communities.
"Their punishment is being taken out of society," Hobbs said. "You still have a human being who should be able to participate in your democracy."
Bringing the Polls Inside
In 2020, the Cook County Jail in Chicago became the first jail in the nation to serve as an official polling place and has served as a polling place for detainees in every election since.
Sophia Ansari, a spokeswoman for the Cook County Sheriff's Office told Law360 in an email that the jail's staff work closely with the Chicago Board of Elections and the Cook County Clerk's Office, the agencies responsible for setting up, staffing and operating polling locations.
For the upcoming general election, Ansari said, there will be five polling locations set up across the jail campus to accommodate all individuals in custody who wish to vote. Voting is scheduled to be held on the next two weekends, starting Saturday. The polling locations offer same-day registration.
Ansari said voter participation "is still a problem." But even when turnout is low inside the jail, it still outpaces outside voting, she said.
"We would like to see more participation by individuals in custody as well as out of custody, which is why the office insisted on civic education classes being offered to individuals," Ansari said.
Research on Cook County, Illinois, suggests that bringing voting into jails can substantially increase participation.
Temple University political scientist Michael Sances studied 18 elections from 2014 through 2024, comparing jail participation before and after the 2020 reform with turnout changes in Chicago's 50 wards. He estimated that the reform increased turnout among people detained before trial by about 21 percentage points across the elections studied.
"They're basically going from no access to access," Sances said.
Colorado has made that access a statewide requirement. After Amanda Gonzalez was elected clerk and recorder in Jefferson County, Colorado, in 2022, she learned that only three people had voted from a jail that she estimated held roughly 800 eligible voters on a typical day.
She said she initially encountered resistance from the sheriff to putting a voting center inside. Gonzalez worked with community organizations to support legislation requiring in-person jail voting statewide.
The resulting law, Senate Bill 24-072, enacted in May 2024, requires at least six hours of in-person voting at county jails and detention centers for general elections, with election officials and a designated sheriff's representative responsible for coordinating access.
"My county went from three to about 350," Gonzalez said of participation that first year. The county's election report records 348 ballots cast by confined voters in November 2024, compared with three in November 2022, a midterm election.
Those are counts from different elections, rather than a turnout rate based on a fixed population. The jail supplies space and security, while her office verifies eligibility and provides trained election workers, she said.
Gonzalez recalled a person in the jail in 2024 who asked those workers whether he was eligible. He was, she said, and afterward described voting as one of his life's most meaningful experiences.
"It made him feel like he mattered," Gonzalez said.
In Ulster County, New York, election officials bring voting assistance into the jail through the mail-ballot process. Commissioner Ashley Torres said officials and League of Women Voters volunteers visit to provide information, register eligible voters and administer mail ballots with bipartisan assistance.
In 2025, they registered 14 people and administered ballots for 28 voters. Those are service figures, rather than a count of ballots ultimately accepted. This year's general election visit was scheduled for Oct. 15.
"The program is hands-on and in that way, it works in giving voters in the jail a connection to the election process that they would normally not have access to if we facilitated everything through the mail," Torres said.
Washington, D.C., offers both in-person and mail voting for people in custody. Figures supplied by Scott Sussman, the BOE's Restore the Vote program manager, show 550 votes from people in DOC custody in the June 2026 primary: 493 cast in person and 57 by mail. Of the in-person voters, 173 used same-day registration.
"You are literally treated just like anybody else," Sussman said. "You just happen to be incarcerated."
Access can vary within a state. Anthony Blankenship, a senior community organizer with Civil Survival in Washington state, described counties where election workers visit to register voters, deliver ballots and collect them, and others where people must initiate requests themselves.
"There are 39 different counties in Washington state, so there are 39 different ways of doing things," Blankenship said.
His coalition wants statewide minimum standards requiring coordination between election and jail officials, voting plans and reporting.
Some counties are "a black hole of information," he said.
The Work Behind Each Registration
For people who cannot seek out election information or deliver a form themselves, access often begins with someone coming into the jail to help.
In Maryland, Joanne Antoine, executive director of Common Cause Maryland, described visits to Ordnance Road Correctional Center in Anne Arundel County, where eligible voters join advocates in a gymnasium, with tables arranged in a circle and snacks to share.
The conversations connect elected offices with issues people care about, including conditions in custody and opportunities after release. Antoine said the setting allows advocates to do more than distribute paperwork.
"We're not just going in with forms," she said.
In Houston, Project Orange volunteers answer questions about the candidates on the ballot, voter eligibility and whether a prior conviction prevents someone from registering.
The volunteers arrive at Harris County Jail with clipboards, registration forms and pens. After identification checks and screening, an officer escorts them to housing areas, where staff lower the television volume so volunteers can explain why they have come.
Charleen Jones, a volunteer with Houston Justice, which runs Project Orange, said a visit can produce 15, 20 or 30 applications. The team takes completed forms to the Harris County Tax Office.
The assistance is nonpartisan, said Angela Hawkins, who helps coordinate visits.
"We don't tell anybody who they should vote for," she said.
But that assistance depends on background checks, advance arrangements and coordination with jail personnel. Volunteers said visits have not always followed a regular schedule, and their work reaches particular housing areas rather than the entire facility.
Registration also leaves the next steps unresolved: whether a voter receives a ballot and whether it reaches election officials in time to count. The volunteers' registration figures do not show how many people ultimately voted, either in custody or after release.
Those steps require someone to take responsibility for them.
Uyeda of the Campaign Legal Center said laws assigning specific duties give advocates a way to hold officials accountable for posting election information, providing supplies and getting forms to the right office.
"Without those specific duties established in law, it becomes very easy for the sheriffs to say they don't have to do something," she said.
She pointed to designated voting coordinators, information requirements and data collection as ways to make access part of a facility's regular operations.
In New York, the proposed Democracy During Detention Act would allow election officials to administer elections in jails as they do in other congregate settings, state Sen. Zellnor Myrie said in a statement supplied by his office. It passed the Senate Elections Committee in April but has not passed either chamber. Myrie hopes to advance it next session, spokesperson Matt Baer said.
"Over the past several years we've removed many barriers for eligible voters to participate in our democracy," Myrie, who represents parts of western and central Brooklyn, said in an email. "Incarcerated New Yorkers who are eligible to vote deserve an actual opportunity to do so."
--Editing by Orlando Lorenzo.
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