Tuesday, April 2nd, is New York’s presidential primary election. Regardless of what anyone may think of the options, or lack thereof, put before voters next week, any opportunity to cast a vote in a free and fair election is a precious commodity – one that countless Americans have fought and died to protect throughout our history. However, this privilege and fundamental constitutional right is routinely denied to incarcerated voters.
The right to full civic participation for all New Yorkers is a core value for my organization, Community Service Society of New York (CSS). CSS began the drive to register and empower voters in the 1980s when the late Richie Perez, a community activist and former member of the Young Lords, started our Voter Participation Project (VPP) in the Bushwick-Cypress Hill sections of Brooklyn. Perez would later become CSS’s political director and take the program citywide. In the decades since, our efforts have registered hundreds of thousands of voters in low-income communities, reversed discriminatory voter purges, and helped people with conviction histories get back their rights to vote and serve on a jury.
The struggle continues as we fight back against the systematic disenfranchisement of incarcerated people. In New York, anyone who is incarcerated for a misdemeanor conviction or because of pretrial detention is eligible to vote. On Rikers Island, there are currently 6,237 individuals detained and nearly every single one of them is eligible to register to vote. Many recent races have been decided by fewer votes than the number of eligible voters in jails. Nonetheless, these incarcerated voters will be deprived of their fundamental right next week simply due to underfunded programs and ineffective policies.
There are no voting sites in city jails and, therefore, incarcerated New Yorkers struggle to participate in elections. The current voting process relies on Department of Correction (DOC) staff to ferry registration forms and absentee ballots between the jails and the local Board of Election (BOE) offices. Incarcerated voters have no choice but to put their faith in the goodwill of the DOC staff, as this process is not governed by any official policy or procedure. As a result, requests for absentee ballots often go unfulfilled. When absentee ballots are actually delivered to the BOE, they are frequently rejected, and voters are not provided an explanation or opportunity to cure.
CSS proudly supports the work being done by the Vote in NYC Jails coalition, which goes into Rikers, speaks with hundreds of potential voters, provides vital education, and helps to complete paperwork for voter registration and absentee ballot requests. Last month, the Coalition penned a sign-on letter demanding that the DOC and BOE invest and commit to making sure all people in New York city jails have their ballots cast and counted. The coalition correctly identified common sense policy changes that would go a long way towards restoring the right to vote in jail. But the coalition is doing work that is the responsibility of government.
The BOE must provide detailed reasons why voting ballots from Rikers are rejected, and make meaningful efforts to reduce the number of rejected ballots in future elections. We also call on the DOC to devote more resources to facilitate people registering to vote and requesting, receiving, and returning absentee ballots. This includes working with the BOE to provide incarcerated voters with the opportunity to cure rejected ballots. The BOE and the DOC must also work together to offer a voter education program and provide non-partisan resources on voting.
Finally and most significantly, the BOE should provide voters at Rikers with the opportunity to vote in-person, as they do for other similarly situated groups that are physically unable to vote at their neighborhood polling place. Current election law provides special accommodations for nursing homes, residential health care facilities, and facilities operated or licensed, or under the jurisdiction of the Veterans Administration. In short, the BOE will go to seniors, veterans, and medically vulnerable voters where they are to ensure that they can vote in-person but will not do the same for people incarcerated at Rikers. This needs to change. BOE must appoint election inspectors to preside over portable voting machines on-site at Rikers Island so that registered voters can cast their ballot directly, as they already do in nursing homes and at VA hospitals.
Let us speak clearly about who these policies impact. Nearly 90 percent of individuals currently detained in New York City jails are non-white. The votes of Black and brown New Yorkers are being suppressed by current DOC and BOE policies and procedures. These policies must be viewed as what they truly are – part of an effort that dates back to the founding of this country that seeks to exclude Black people from full participation in American life. If we truly care about fair and free elections and full participation in the democratic process, we must ensure the right to vote for incarcerated citizens.
David R. Jones, Esq., is President and CEO of the Community Service Society of New York (CSS), the leading voice on behalf of low-income New Yorkers for more than 175 years. The views expressed in this column are solely those of the writer. The Urban Agenda is available on CSS’s website: www.cssny.org.