Opinion: Facilitating democracy during detention

During the November 2023 general election, we – the two Ulster County elections commissioners – piloted a program with our local jail to ensure that citizens who have been detained and still have the right to vote can exercise that right. Now, we are urging bipartisan election commissioners around the state to do the same and for Albany to pass legislation formalizing our program. 

In New York, individuals lose their right to vote while serving a sentence for a felony conviction. Citizens detained before trial or serving time for a misdemeanor can still vote, but they have only one way to do so: by applying for, receiving, filling out and returning an absentee ballot on time. 

We recognized that each of those steps poses significant obstacles to detained citizens, whose mail service is not reliable or prompt and who lack regular access to the online registration, ballot request and tracking tools that have been launched over the last few years. So instead of passively awaiting whatever absentee ballot applications might timely arrive at our office, we decided to take the paperwork directly to the eligible population.

In close cooperation with our county sheriff and his staff, we brought a team of trained volunteers and a stack of voter registration forms, absentee ballot applications and the absentee ballots themselves to the Ulster County Jail. There were just over 130 unsentenced individuals at the time, some of whom were ineligible to vote. With bipartisan integrity safeguards in place, only eligible citizens were registered and subsequently offered a ballot. 

While onsite, we registered 16 individuals to vote for the first time and processed absentee ballot applications on the spot for 31 voters, who were all able to fill out their ballot and return it directly to us for scanning back at the county Board of Elections office (where we scan all absentee ballots). In doing so, we were able to avoid many common issues with the ballots on the spot, eliminating the need for subsequent back and forth to cure defects that can disqualify valid ballots (as we do with the general population). The voters were able to bypass all of the hurdles this population typically faces in voting, and also had the opportunity to ask us – the stewards of Ulster elections – questions about voting and how to exercise their rights going forward. 

Our pilot program mirrors one already mandated for other congregate housing facilities. State election law already requires that we make similarly bipartisan visits to facilitate in-person absentee voting at nursing homes and Veterans Administration hospitals for each election. That program, dating back to 1988, has proven to be effective and scalable. Expanding this existing program to correctional facilities is a logical, feasible step for bipartisan administrators to take to ensure all eligible voters can exercise their rights. 

State Sen. Zellnor Myrie and Assembly Member Latrice Walker have proposed legislation that would codify the program we piloted for large correctional facilities in populous counties around the state. For smaller facilities, the bill rightfully requires cooperation between elections and corrections officials to ensure timely delivery of registration and absentee ballot application forms. We urge Albany to pass that legislation when they return next year. 

But local boards of elections around the state need not wait to be regulated in order to proactively implement a program that meets constituents’ needs in time for the 2024 election, just as we did in Ulster County. As election commissioners, we have a duty to ensure all eligible voters – including voters detained in jails – can exercise their right to the franchise, and sometimes that means taking access to the franchise to them.

Ashley Torres and John Quigley are, respectively, the Democratic and Republican election commissioners for Ulster County.