The 470,000 Potential Voters Most Likely To Be Disenfranchised Next Election
In the months before prisons and jails banned visitors due to the coronavirus, election workers and volunteers streamed in and out of Chicago’s Cook County Jail helping people there get ready to vote.
They lugged about 40 voting machines into the facility’s chapels, rec rooms and law libraries. They taught civics classes in the common areas, reminding detainees that they have the right to cast a ballot if, like more than 70 percent of people in U.S. jails, they are being held pre-trial and haven’t yet been convicted of a crime. Working with a nonpartisan organization of young activists called Chicago Votes, they registered more than 1,500 new incarcerated voters in total.
By early March, the Illinois primary election was approaching—and so was COVID-19. But jail
