November’s election — the first to feature a prominent candidate with felony convictions — comes at a important point in the voting rights landscape for former prisoners. About 2 million people with felony convictions have regained the right to vote since the late ’90s, says The Sentencing Project. Despite the sea change, inmates rarely are asked their political views. Most will be eligible to vote once they return home. In 2020. The Marshall Project wanted to know what people in prison and jail thought about an election that has been cast as a contest between “a prosecutor and a convicted felon.” More than 54,000 people in 785 prisons and jails in 45 states and the District of Columbia responded to a survey.
Most respondents said they would vote for Trump, with support particularly strong among white men. A substantial minority of Black men said they’d vote for Trump if given the chance. A large share of people behind bars from all racial backgrounds don’t identify with either major political party, identifying as independent. A majority of those who identified as Democrats and independents said the U.S. is ready for a woman president. Republicans are more divided. Public sentiment about disenfranchisement as a punishment for crime is changing. A majority of voters said they’d support a law guaranteeing voting rights for people 18 and older, including those in prison or on probation or parole, according to a 2022 poll conducted on behalf of several criminal justice advocacy groups. A few years before that, a majority of Americans said they were against people voting from behind bars. Only a handful of states allow some people in prison to cast a ballot. Although most people in jail can still vote on Election Day, few do because of many obstacles.
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