A bill making its way through the Connecticut General Assembly would streamline the process of voting for those behind bars who haven’t lost their right to vote.
In Connecticut, only those convicted of felonies who are currently confined to a sentence of imprisonment lose their voting rights. Those convicted of certain election-related felonies lose the right to vote until the discharge of their probation or parole.
House Bill 7229 has advanced out of the Government Administration and Elections Committee. It would allow for the distribution of absentee ballot applications in detention facility common areas.
Secretary of the State Stephanie Thomas, Connecticut’s top elections official, supports the bill, calling it a first step needed to break down barriers to voting for the incarcerated.
“Pre-trial detainees make up almost 40% of our entire prison population here in Connecticut,” Thomas said. “As of February, it was 4,200 individuals.”
“These people have not [legally] lost their right to vote, but because of logistical barriers, they have in fact lost their right to vote,” Thomas said. “And I don’t know anyone who believes that someone’s ability to vote should depend on how much money they have. That is not the democracy that I signed up for.”
Avery Gilbert, director of the Civil Rights Advocacy Clinic at Yale Law School, said it’s important for those behind bars to feel connected to the community as part of the electorate.
“The concept of corrections is that everybody can be returned to the fold of civil society,” Gilbert said. “And if we believe in that, then we have to be able to give some avenue to participate, to make sure that people don’t feel disempowered and locked out of the process.”
State Rep. Matt Blumenthal, a Stamford Democrat who serves as co-chair of the Government Administration and Elections Committee, said voting rights should be sacrosanct.
“It's the right on which all other rights depend,” Blumenthal said. “And if we have thousands of people who have that right and are not able to exercise it because of things and processes that we do as a state, that is a crime, and it's one that we have to fix.”
