October 6, 2021
Chairman Finegold, Chairman Ryan, and Members of the Joint Committee on Election Laws:
I am submitting testimony in my capacity as Chair of the Issues Committee of Progressive Massachusetts. We urge a favorable report for S.474 / H.836: An Act to Protect the Voting Rights of Eligible Incarcerated People.
Progressive Massachusetts is a statewide grassroots organization devoted to advancing policies that would make Massachusetts more equitable, just, sustainable, and democratic.
We believe that our democracy is strongest when all are able to participate, but many prospective voters face near insurmountable barriers in seeking to do so.
Take, for example, those who are incarcerated. In Massachusetts, individuals who are incarcerated without felony convictions maintain their right to vote, but too often they are unable to exercise that vote in practice. If individuals do not have timely access to the materials and information they need to vote, then that right does not exist.
It is important to remember that many of these incarcerated individuals are in pre-trial detention: in other words, they have not yet been convicted of any crime, but they are, in practice, losing their right to vote.
When incarceration leads to a loss of voting rights, it is clear that mass incarceration is a form of racist voter suppression. Indeed, while only 21 percent of the state’s population is Black or Latinx, more than 54 percent of the people incarcerated in the Department of Corrections are. Mass incarceration is systematically reducing Black and Brown voters from the electorate.
It is not lost on us that the only two states in the US that have full voter enfranchisement, including for those incarcerated with felony convictions, are Maine and Vermont, the two whitest states. Indeed, we can see the clear connections to the history of racist voter suppression in this country that we routinely call out when it happens elsewhere and need to call out when it happens here.
The practices and procedures around voting within our correctional system have an impact on incarcerated individuals even beyond their time there. When individuals are confused about whether or not they maintain their right to vote, they can be led to believe that they have lost it, even when they return to the community. Even though we have no laws disenfranchising individuals post-incarceration, I have—in my experience volunteering around the commonwealth—encountered individuals who believed they could not vote because of a past conviction. Confusion is a hallmark of voter suppression.
These bills would help us end such disenfranchisement by requiring sheriffs to provide all eligible voters ballot applications, voting materials, and a private place to vote, and to ensure timely return of applications and ballots, among other steps; and by improving registration rates for returning citizens. It also strengthens data and reporting because you can’t fix what you can’t measure.
Studies have shown that voting and civic participation are conducive to successful re-entry by giving returning citizens a stake in the future of their community. When we vote, we are voting for the world we want, or at least prefer, to live in, and we are strengthening the social fabric.
We urge you to vote in support of this bill to make the right to vote meaningful for all.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Cohn
Chair, Issues Committee
Progressive Massachusetts
