In 2016 the Ballots of Bars campaign began as an effort to raise awareness about criminal disenfranchisement in Massachusetts, in collaboration with two incarcerated people and the Emancipation Initiative. Incarcerated activists have identified criminal disenfranchisement as one of the most significant injustices that they face. Incarcerated people have been fighting for their voting rights in Massachusetts for more than 40 years.
Just recently, Massachusetts Senator Hinds introduced two new bills that would re-enfranchise that state’s incarcerated population. Bills SD25 & SD26 where introduced during this newest legislative session. Ballots Over Bars representatives will be meeting with Danielle Allard, Senator Hinds’ Director of Budget and Policy on Friday, January 25th to learn more about the bills in order to strategize with their office on how to ensure its success. In addition to working with the pre-existing bills EI organizers have also planned to launch a ballot initiative in their state.
In order to fulling restore the #right2vote to prisoners in Massachusetts, we would need a legislative effort for federal and municipal elections. In addition to this, ensuring the #right2vote to prisoners requires an amendment to the state’s constitution. This is also the case in Washington, both states have constitutional language that completely disenfranchise incarcerated people from participating in legislation.
In February – next month – Emancipation Initiative will be launching Mass POWER – Massachusetts Prisoners and Organizers Working for Enfranchisement and Restoration – to bolster efforts that began in 2016 entitled #DonateYourVote where organizers focused on pairing everyone of the ~9,000 state prisoners in Massachusetts with someone else on the outside. Through these pairs prisoners were able to correspond about the various positions up for election. After correspondence with prisoners the outside participant ‘donated their vote’ by voting the way that the incarcerated person would vote if they had that right. In 2016 EI successfully made a couple dozen pairs which more than quadrupled in 2018 with about 140 pairs. This year with the collaboration with Right2Vote’s national campaign we look forward to further expanding this voting strategy to thousands of pairs until every single incarcerated citizen has the opportunity to exercise their right2vote.
