Colorado Becomes First State to Require Polling Stations in Jails
On May 31, 2024, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) signed S.B. 72 into law, making his the first state in the U.S. to require jails to operate in-person polling stations for eligible detainees to cast a vote.
Some 6,000 people are held in the state’s jails on any given day, the vast majority awaiting trial and not yet convicted of a crime. That makes them eligible to vote. But while jailed, the county Sheriff controls their access to the ballot box. Sheriffs may also ban groups that provide assistance with voter registration, like the League of Women Voters.
Unsurprisingly, when lawmakers considering S.B. 72 asked El Paso County Clerk Steve Schleiker how many votes were cast in the last election at the county jail, the answer was: “Zero.” The nonprofit Criminal Justice Reform Coalition found that just 231 people jailed statewide—less than 4% of all detainees—cast votes from jail in the 2022 general election.
As PLN reported, studies show that most U.S. convicted felons don’t vote even in the few places where they retain eligibility, most likely due to difficulty getting and returning a ballot; however, in jails that opened polling places, like Chicago’s Cook County Jail, voter turnout has soared past the surrounding area. [See: PLN, Sep. 2022, p.50; and Apr. 2023, p.27.]
Under Colorado’s new law, Sheriffs must keep a polling place open in their jails for at least six hours on election day. They must also provide drop-off points for detainees to vote by mail. Massachusetts, Nevada and Washington have also passed laws to make it easier for detainees to vote from jail, but only Colorado requires a polling station inside jails.
“It’s really a gold standard for what all states can aspire to,” said Carmen López, who provides expertise on jail voting for The Sentencing Project nonprofit.
The bill drew blowback from Sheriffs, who complained that detainees already enjoyed voting access. However, in the same breath, they said that implementing SB 72 would be too expensive—begging the question of just how much access detainees actually had. Those detained in Denver jails have had a polling place open during elections since 2020, with high turnout but without high costs.
In a Jefferson County pilot program that also didn’t cost much, the jail added a hotline for detainees to get voting information, which was posted inside the jail, too. Guards also distributed voter registration forms to cells. As a result, turnout jumped from three votes cast in 2022 elections to over 100 in the 2024 primaries.
“If you told me we had some precincts [outside of jail] with turnout rates of less than 1 percent, I’d be screaming at the top of my lungs about what is going on there,” said County Clerk Amanda Gonzalez. “But our system has, unfortunately, a really long history of not including people of color, low-income people, and people involved in our criminal justice system. That’s exactly what we’re trying to fix.”
Source: Bolts Magazine
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