Previously and currently incarcerated people in Illinois can’t vote or face numerous hurdles to cast a ballot. Several initiatives in Chicago aim to make that process easier and more accessible.
by NaBeela Washington
Organizers from Chicago Votes rally in Springfield, Illinois, in 2024 to urge legislators to pass a bill allowing civic education courses to all inmates in Illinois prisons. (Provided/Chicago Votes)
Chad Emerson didn’t fully grasp how politics could shape his life — until he was incarcerated.
Emerson, 39, was convicted of felony drug charges in 2012 and spent nearly eight years in federal prison in Texas. There, he began watching the news more often, which piqued his interest in politics and legislation, such as when Hillary Clinton pledged to reform mandatory minimum sentencing for nonviolent drug offenses.
“I didn’t pay enough attention to politics before I went to prison. But then once you're in, we're watching the news every day. We're paying attention to every senator and congressman and lawmaker and what their involvement is on this bill,” Emerson said. “But by the time I'm finally paying attention to politics, I can't vote.”
Over 31,000 Illinoisans weren't able to go to the polls or mail in a ballot in 2024, according to The Sentencing Project, an advocacy and research group that seeks to end mass incarceration. Citizens currently serving out their sentences are not eligible to vote in Illinois. Although people who are awaiting sentencing can vote, not every jail provides the necessary support or access for them to exercise that right, with some failing to offer absentee ballots or facilitate the voting process, advocates said. Misinformation about the rights of incarcerated individuals further perpetuates the failure of the carceral system, advocates said.
This exclusion from the civic process highlights how incarceration and reintegration challenges prevent someone from participating in democracy, advocates told City Bureau. Incarcerated individuals, voting rights activists and community organizers have long pushed for reforms to ensure incarcerated people have a voice and can hold elected officials accountable.
And there is broad support among incarcerated people to regain those rights. According to a 2022 poll from The Sentencing Project, over half of those surveyed said they felt they should be able to vote while serving a sentence for any crime.
“They have prevented me from voting once and that made me realize my voice has an impact on the results,” said a Latino man in Cook County Jail who identifies as an Independent. The man was responding to a 2024 survey conducted by The Marshall Project of 54,000 people behind bars before the presidential election.
There is a growing effort to address these barriers in Chicago. That includes initiatives such as educational campaigns by civil rights and nonprofit organizations to inform incarcerated individuals of their voting rights, as well as legislative efforts to allow voting while incarcerated.
“I think voting is a way that we can connect people back to their communities,” said Frederique Desrosiers of Chicago Votes. “Most people won't spend their whole life in prison.”
Emerson completed his sentence in mid-2021 and filled out a ballot for the first time in a decade during November’s election.
“This year was my very first year getting to vote. It felt great,” Emerson said.
(Diana Ejaita for The Marshall Project)
A Changing Tide
Incarcerated people represent a broad spectrum of political leanings.
The Marshall Project surveyed incarcerated people during the 2020 and 2024 election cycles to learn more about their political views, the candidates they support and how incarceration affects their perspectives on key issues. In the 2024 survey, designed to shed light on an election between “a prosecutor and a convicted felon,” most respondents said they would vote for President Donald Trump if they could.
But incarcerated individuals face significant barriers to voting, excluding them from the democratic process and deepening inequities.
An estimated 4.6 million Americans could not vote as of 2023 due to felony convictions, according to The Sentencing Project. Even where voting is allowed, logistical challenges like limited access to registration materials and unclear eligibility rules make participation unnecessarily difficult, Desrosiers said. This exclusion also stifles their voices and hinders reintegration while leaving critical policy decisions, such as criminal justice reform, without their input.
Moreover, the impact on mental health cannot be overlooked: 43% of people in state prisons have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder, according to Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit research hub focusing on mass incarceration.
In some areas, authorities have expanded voting access to people in pretrial detention.
In 2020, Cook County Jail became the first such facility to operate onsite voting, making it the most active voting precinct in the city. Backed by advocacy groups such as Chicago Votes, the legislation also requires all other state jails to work with the Illinois State Board of Elections to conduct an absentee ballot chase program, which involves sending reminders to mail-in-ballot voters.
In 2024, Los Angeles County did the same for all county jails, while Colorado allowed in-person voting at all state jails.
Advocacy groups and local media have worked to help inmates learn about who and what they can vote for.
Nonprofit Chicago Votes coordinates regular voter registration drives at the jail and produces a nonpartisan, youth-led voter guide for elections, according to its website. In the fall, the group dropped off 1,000 voter guides at the jail and worked to ensure inmates could access the guide on the tablets available in the jail, said Desrosiers, the group’s policy manager.
In her role, Desrosiers manages advocacy efforts, engages with legislators, works on implementing voting processes with the Illinois Department of Corrections and organizes outreach.
“We also do poll watching in the jail, just to make sure everything is going right. And we provide them with information from partners, like the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, who could be on standby if there are any legal issues when they’re trying to vote," Desrosiers said.
Ballot boxes. (Talia Sprague/for City Bureau)
Their work intersects with Injustice Watch, a Chicago-based non-partisan journalism organization that examines equity and justice in the Cook County court system. Injustice Watch produces a Check Your Judges guide for each judicial election, providing background on judges’ records, key court decisions, controversies, political connections and recommendations from bar associations.
For the 2024 election, Injustice Watch distributed 150,000 print copies of their guide throughout Cook County, including at the Cook County Jail, said Charles Preston, community engagement manager. They also published live election results for the first time this year.
For the first time last fall, Injustice Watch also launched workshops at the jail about the judicial system and the importance of judicial elections, Preston said.
“Judges are 90% of the ballot. Yet, it's not 90% of the conversation that we have locally…There are very specific things in courts that are at the intersection of everything everybody does, from traffic tickets to divorce to marriage, to [orders] of protection,” Preston said. “And so, these are things that aren't talked about during election time, or aren't a part of the political conversation, but affect the lives of everyday people.”
Some incarcerated people in Cook County Jail who responded to The Marshall Project’s survey said their experiences behind bars have made it clearer why voting makes a difference.
“Well, it is more apparent now than ever that the decisions of elected officials affect my livelihood especially now that I have no freedom,” said a Black man who identifies as an independent.
Chicago Votes organizers at the Illinois State Capitol in late 2024. (Provided/Chicago Votes).
‘Their Voices Should Be Heard’
While advocates and lawmakers have improved voting access for people in jail, efforts are ongoing to extend that right to people serving sentences for a conviction.
State Rep. La Shawn K. Ford, who represents parts of the West Side and west suburbs, has worked for years to restore voting rights to incarcerated individuals in Illinois.
A previous bill to restore voting rights to people in state prisons and jails within 14 days of a conviction stalled in Springfield. His latest proposal is House Bill 39, which aims to allow incarcerated individuals to vote by mail from their last known addresses. He told City Bureau he hoped to pass the bill during the General Assembly’s lame-duck session in January, but the House of Representatives wrapped up their legislative session without taking action on the proposal.
“I believe that the government actually bends to protest,” Ford said. “America allows us to protest and fight to make things better. If people who feel disenfranchised will fight for their rights. America gives you that right.”
Chicago Votes also is organizing to end felony disenfranchisement in Illinois.
Through the Unlock Civics Policy platform, organizers backed a 2019 law that began providing non-partisan civic courses to inmates within a year of being released. More than 270 incarcerated people have been trained as peer instructors in the program, and more than 5,000 people have taken the courses since 2020, according to the Chicago Votes website.
The law was created by some of the people most affected by it, Desrosiers said.
"This legislation was written and came directly out of think tanks within Stateville [Correctional Center], where incarcerated individuals were working on law and policy initiatives,” Desrosiers said. “These individuals are extremely knowledgeable and have a lot to offer. They are the ones who basically wrote this language, and they continue to consult with us on how to talk to legislators and craft talking points."
More recently, advocates pushed for the state to pass the Reintegration and Civic Empowerment Act, which would make these courses available to all inmates regardless of when they were incarcerated or how long their sentence is, according to the legislation. It also would reinstate the right to vote within 14 days of conviction, aligning with Ford’s first proposal.
Chicago Votes advocates and supporters rallied in Springfield in November to urge legislators to pass the bill. Senators adjourned their January session without taking further action on it.
Chicago Votes organizers at the Illinois State Capitol in late 2024. (Provided/Chicago Votes).
"Some of the biggest obstacles we face to passing this bill are narratives and public perception of who people are in prison, and thinking about them as these violent, dangerous people," Desrosiers said. "But the reality is that there are regular people who have a lot of experience in navigating these systems that our elected officials have an impact on, and their voices should be heard."
She also draws a direct line between the legacy of disenfranchisement laws and their modern effects, emphasizing the continuing racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
"A lot of these pieces of legislation and felony disenfranchisement laws came out after the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments that gave political power to Black people,” Desrosiers said. “For example, after the 15th Amendment in 1870, Illinois wrote a new constitution, and that’s when you start seeing the first felony disenfranchisement laws on the books. These laws are directly related to Jim Crow laws that sought to strip political power away from Black people.
"Even if the intention was not specifically to disenfranchise disproportionately Black and Brown communities, that is the effect. So now, what are we going to do about it as lawmakers?"
Rehabilitation and Accountability
Those committed to this work should remember that addressing issues concerning justice-impacted individuals requires focusing on reentry challenges, which are closely linked to the struggles faced by low-income and unhoused populations, Preston said.
There should be more conversations among politicians and community members about the economic impact of incarceration on individuals and their families, Preston said. A major issue for those in prison or jail is the stigma they face — being defined by a crime, often without having been convicted, as they wait in custody, he said.
"I really want politicians to familiarize themselves with the Cook County Jail and go see those voters. I want candidates to make an attempt. I believe there will be organizations that are willing to help do that,” Preston said.
If politicians did more to support prisons as opportunities for rehabilitation, it could make a significant difference, Emerson said. Guards should see themselves as individuals who can help build and guide them toward becoming productive, pro-social citizens, rather than focusing on demeaning behavior such as humiliating searches and confiscating personal belongings, which further harms incarcerated individuals, he said.
A Latino man in Cook County Jail who identifies as an independent shared a similar point of view in The Marshall Project survey.
“Because we need people in positions of power and authority who are conscious of the lack of remediation happening. There should be more resources invested in correcting behaviors instead of punishments,” he said.
Josephine Horace-Jackson poses for a portrait in Chicago’s Grant Park on Monday, Nov. 25, 2024. (Talia Sprague/for City Bureau)
Josephine Horace-Jackson, an organizer who counsels women released from Cook County Jail, also agrees with that perspective.
Horace-Jackson, who served a one-year sentence for a felony in the ‘80’s, now helps recently released women find resources to help them transition back into society. Without that kind of support, formerly incarcerated people face collateral consequences, or challenges extending far beyond their initial time in jail or prison, she said.
Helping incarcerated or formerly incarcerated people be civically engaged and knowing their rights is a key part of the rehabilitation and reintegration process, she said.
“I used to think that the system was broke, but it's not. It's functioning the way it was designed. Does prison really rehabilitate people, or does it cause further harm?” Horace-Jackson said.
“We deserve second chances. I say that those barriers should not exist, because how do you expect one to acclimate back to the society when they can't get a job, they can't get housing or benefits?”
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