After spending more than half of his life in the Maryland prison system, Craig Muhammad came home in September. he registered to vote and cast a ballot in the 2024 election. “It went beautiful,” Muhammad said as he walked out of a polling place in Baltimore. “It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was,” he added. “But God … I’m 64 years old. I voted today for the first time in my life. Wow. I can’t wait to tell my sister.” In 25 states, including Maryland, people can vote as soon as they get out of prison. Many others have felony disenfranchisement laws, which partially or completely bar former prisoners from voting. That patchwork of laws can cause confusion and frustration, leaving some newly released citizens unaware of or unable to exercise their rights, reports NPR. “The right to vote is going to vary quite a bit across different states in the U.S.,” said Ariel White, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It can be really challenging for people to get accurate information about what the law is and how it might be applied to them.”
When Elizabeth Shatswell first voted in Washington's primary in the spring, she was surprised by how simple and a bit of a "let down," the process it was. Shatswell, who was released from prison last spring after serving 23 years, now serves as a correctional education manager at JSTOR Access Labs, which works to increase academic resources in prisons. An estimated 4 million U.S. citizens are unable to cast a ballot, says The Sentencing Project. It estimates that 1 in 22 Black Americans of voting age can’t vote, three and a half times the rate of other Americans. Johnny Le'Dell Pippins, 55, is one of them. He received clemency from Illinois and was recently released from prison after 27 years. He isn’t allowed to cast a ballot this year.. “I'm part of the process. I put gas in the car, so I get to help decide where we go,” he said. “I should have that inalienable right of every American.” If he were back in Illinois, he would be voting, but Iowa partially restricts access for those with past felony convictions. There’s an assumption that people with criminal records tend to vote Democratic because of their experience, but that may not always be the case. The Marshall Project, which surveyed 54,000 people in prisons and jails, said “roughly half” supported former President Trump. The sample had a larger representation of white respondents compared to the overall prison population.