Oct 23

Oct 23 Vermont Prisoners in Mississippi Vote at the Highest Rate

More than 60 percent of the Vermont prisoners registered to vote in a private prison in Mississippi have voted, according to new research from the Center for Research on Vermont.

“The discussion around prison rights and prison voting is so stigmatized and misinformed that people just assume people sitting in prison can't vote,” University of Vermont Senior Ryan Joseph said.

Yet, Vermont’s constitution grants everybody — even prisoners — the right to vote. Vermont is one of two states and Washington D.C. that allow prisoners to vote, Joseph said.

“Encouraging all members of our community to vote is the right thing to do” Joseph said. “By encouraging as many people as possible to exercise their protected right to vote, we partake in and produce a system that yields stronger, more democratic results.”

And that includes the 200 Vermonters housed in a private prison in Mississippi, Joseph said, even though the other prisoners in that facility are not allowed to vote.

Although the Vermont Department of Corrections does not track how many ballots leave their facilities, Joseph has been tracking the numbers through the Secretary of State’s ballot return data.

On October 28th of 2020, 76 of 123 registered incarcerated residents had voted by mail for a voter turnout 61.8%, Joseph said. However, only eight percent of the incarcerated population was registered to vote. Yet in the private prison in Mississippi, almost 25% of the 209 prisoners had registered to vote (48) and almost two-thirds, (30) had returned their ballots, Joseph said.

During the 2016 election, 84 Vermont prisoners successfully cast ballots, according to research from Eleanor Shea, a Harvard student who published a thesis on prisoner voting in Vermont. In the 2018 midterms, that number grew to 122. There are about 1409 people currently incarcerated, according to state data.

By referencing the address and acronyms of Vermont’s prisons and of Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Mississippi, where Vermont keeps 219 prisoners, Joseph tallies prisoners who are registered to vote, and those who have mailed ballots back to town clerks.

Due to COVID-19, predictions were low-balled, assuming that prisoners would not likely be voting much this election.

“To compare this year to other years is like comparing apples to Holstein cows,” said Rachel Feldman, a spokesperson for the Vermont department of corrections.

Every year, volunteer groups like The League of Women Voters and Disability Rights come to correctional facilities and give out voting information and resources. This year those volunteers are not able to come by, but officials are making sure prisoners have all of the resources they need in order to exercise this right, Feldman said.

“We knew that Covid was probably going to last to a period of time where the election would be impacted so we were already working with the groups who would normally be coming in for those voter drives to get different materials into people's hands,” Feldman said.

Though the facilities provide everything prisoners need to vote, they do not pressure anyone to vote, it is up to the individual, Feldman said.

“We are not in the practice of in any way using our position as Vermont D.O.C. to tell people that they should or should not [vote]. The right to vote is an individual's choice. What we do is we provide all of the information that person needs to do that and then the individual makes their own choice,” said Feldman.

James Lyall, executive director of Vermont's chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, pushed for more prisoners access to the ballot, according to an Oct. 20 article by the Center for Public Integrity.

“There’s more work to be done to make sure that people actually are able to access that right,” Lyall told CPI.

Despite his concerns, Vermont is one of the “better states” in the nation when it comes to ballot access, Lyall said.

In Vermont, absentee voters concerned about mailing their ballots in time, can drop-off the ballots in person at their local town clerks’ office. However, for prisoners that option does not exist. Furloughed prisoners can still drop-off a ballot, however.