This story was published as a part of Voting Rights Day, a collaboration with the Guardian US. Follow them on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or attend one of their events.
Durrel Douglas says most of the people he met during his first get out the vote campaign inside the Harris County jail in January 2018 were surprised to see him there. As he and other volunteers with the Houston Justice Coalition went from pod to pod, registering people to vote and helping them apply for mail-in ballots, jail staff told him they didn’t realize anyone behind bars was allowed to cast a ballot. People incarcerated inside the hulking lockup in downtown Houston were also perplexed. “Many of them were just shocked to learn they could register and vote,” he says.
In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the voting rights of people in pretrial detention who, unlike people held in state prisons, haven’t been convicted of a crime. That means the majority of people in local jails likely meet the qualifications to vote. Yet voting rights attorneys say jails and elections administrators across the country have for decades failed to develop plans that allow incarcerated people who are eligible to exercise their right to vote.
