| No Images? Click here   A nonprofit group in Chicago is working to register jail detainees in one of the country's biggest jails. The group, which visits the jail monthly, has registered more than 1,800 detainees and wants to get hundreds more on the rolls ahead of this year’s midterms.That number may seem small when it comes to tipping the balance during an election, but inmates ― most of them had no idea they could vote ― told HuffPost that registering to vote meant so much more than just casting a ballot. Sam Levine, a HuffPost reporter who covers voter rights, wrote about why this matters.Talk about the seed of the story? Why did you decide to focus on getting jail inmates to vote?I knew that people lose their right to vote in 48 states if they have a felony conviction, but I had never really thought about what happens to someone's voting rights when they're charged with a crime. A source alerted me to this program, and that was really the first time I learned that someone sitting in jail is completely eligible to vote (unless in certain states they're on parole or probation for another felony). Mother Jones had a really good story that highlighted the lack of data on voting in jail and I read about how inmates in an Indiana jail are suing the sheriff for not helping them vote, so that made me aware that there could be a larger problem here.I wanted to understand why jail was a good place to register to vote. When someone gets arrested and is sitting in jail, the last thing they're probably thinking about is voting. Sheriffs too have an enormous public safety responsibility, and registering people to vote is probably pretty low on their list. So I wanted to understand why both the inmates and the sheriff should care about getting people signed up. What I learned is that in the Cook County jail, both the inmates and the sheriff see it as a way of reclaiming a voice and a connection to others that will make detainees less likely to return to jail.What most surprised you during the course of reporting the story?First, was how clearly the detainees we met understood the importance of voting. When we asked the detainees how it felt to register, almost all of them spoke about wanting to have a voice. The link between voting and being a part of a larger community is abstract and nebulous, but the inmates we talked to instinctively got it. I was also surprised by how many of them just had no idea they could vote. One man we spoke to estimated that it was his 8th time in jail and he had never voted because he thought he was ineligible.Second was how Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart bought into the program. A lot of the detainees we interviewed said they hated Dart and the conditions in the jail and would like to vote him out of office. When I told Dart that, he said he was OK with people in his custody voting against him if that's what they wanted to do.What do you wish readers understood about voter disenfranchisement?It's possible to disenfranchise people without an explicit policy preventing them from voting. Someone in jail is likely completely eligible to vote, but unlikely to do so simply because they don't know. In examining disenfranchisement, we shouldn't only look at specific laws and practices, but also how they're being communicated and explained, particularly to communities that are less likely to vote.This story highlights that casting a ballot isn't just about expressing your political preference, it's about dignity. By letting people vote, society tells them that they are important enough to have a say in who governs them and that's something that makes us feel important. When we don't let people vote, we are telling them that they don't deserve to have that voice and that's something that can really wound someone's self worth.I don't think voting on its own can cause people to leave the criminal justice system and successfully re-enter society, but it gives them the most basic building block to feel connected to other people and that they have a stake in what happens to their community.
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