On election day, advocates say detainees need better ballot access on Rikers
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A group of advocates on Tuesday called for the Department of Correction and Board of Elections to be held accountable for their joint running of the city’s voting program in its jails. AP file photo by Seth Wenig
By Jacob Kaye
Though only a small fraction of eligible voters made their way to the polls on Tuesday for the all but predetermined presidential primary, one group of New Yorkers who may have wanted to make the election day trip was unable to.
The Vote in NYC Jails Coalition on Tuesday called on the City Council to hold an oversight hearing on the city’s efforts to ensure that detainees on Rikers Island not only get access to a ballot, but that those ballots get counted.
Currently, detainees are offered the opportunity to vote absentee – but advocates say the voting program run by the city’s Department of Correction and Board of Elections doesn’t work very effectively.
Only around 47 percent of the absentee ballots handed out to detainees in the city’s jails are returned to the city’s Board of Elections for tallying, according to the coalition. Statewide, the return rate is a little more than 73 percent.
“The [majority] of the people at Rikers are not convicted of anything – they're straight up citizens who are just being denied their vote,” Rigodis Appling, a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society told the Eagle on Tuesday. “When you already remove people from their community in that way, it just emphasizes the powerlessness and the separation.”
Appling, who rallied alongside members of the coalition on Tuesday in Manhattan, said that ensuring detainees can vote and have their votes counted is important in its own right, but so are the public safety impacts of participating in an election.
“When people come out of jail or prison, when they voted, they've already felt like they're part of a community,” she said. “When people feel empowered, if they have choices, it leads to better choices.”
Appling said that the voting program for detainees has improved in recent years, but much remains desired.
The program underwent an overhaul under former DOC Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi, who led the agency under Mayor Bill de Blasio for seven months in 2021. Schiraldi ordered the hiring of an individual to run the program – which previously was without a director.
The staffer now distributes absentee ballot requests to detainees, collects them and delivers them to Board of Election offices throughout the city. They later aid in the distribution of the ballots and their return to the BOE.
But Appling said that one person isn’t enough to run the entire operation.
“We're asking for the DOC to expand the program that they already are doing by having more than one person,” she said. “It's impossible for one person to do all of those ballots and take them all around because of the time limits within an election.”
Appling also urged the DOC to allow volunteers with the Vote in NYC Jails Coalition to more frequently come into the jail complex on Rikers Island to help register detainees to vote and inform them about upcoming elections.
A spokesperson for the DOC dismissed the idea that the agency was interfering with detainees’ right to vote in any way.
“The notion that the department is suppressing any individual’s vote is absurd,” the department spokesperson said.
“Dedicated DOC staff work year-round on civic engagement and collaborate closely with volunteers to educate people in custody about voting, provide non-partisan information, and assist with filling out voter registration forms,” they added. “”The department cannot confirm what is on an individual ballot filled out by a person in custody.”
But Appling said that the coalition’s attention has mostly shifted to the BOE, who holds more power over the implementation of elections on RIkers.
The coalition has called on the agency to place a permanent early voting site within the city’s jails, as well as an election day polling site, similar to the ones run in nursing homes throughout New York.
In February, the coalition penned a letter to the BOE listing its requests, and detailing the “barriers and difficulties [faced by detainees attempting to vote] and requested that the Board intervene in order to facilitate the exercise of the right to vote for incarcerated New Yorkers.”
As of Tuesday, the coalition had yet to hear back from the agency.
In response to the coalition’s letter, a spokesperson for the BOE said in a statement to the Eagle: “In conjunction with our government partners at the NYC Department of Corrections, we offer all eligible voters registered in the City of New York the opportunity to vote.”
The coalition is now turning to the City Council in the hopes that it will hold an oversight hearing on the implementation of elections on Rikers.
The coalition said it wants the Council to get answers about the viability of placing an early voting site and election day site within the jails, the rate of ballots cast by incarcerated New Yorkers that are rejected and go uncounted, the extent and quality of voter education within the jails and the accessibility of information regarding elections given to detainees.
City Councilmember Sandy Nurse, who chairs the Council’s Committee on Criminal Justice, said that she was open to putting together a hearing on the topic.
“We are meeting with the coalition and are looking at when we can hold a hearing,” Nurse told the Eagle. “I absolutely want to ensure all eligible voters in our city jails are given access to vote.”
The coalition also appeared to receive support from City Councilmember Lincoln Restler, who chairs the Committee on Governmental Operations, State and Federal Legislation.
“It's a blow to our democracy every time the city fails to provide adequate voting access to incarcerated New Yorkers who are eligible to vote,” Restler said in a statement. “I will continue to push the Board of Elections and the Department of Correction to do everything in their power to facilitate ballot box access in our city jails, where pretrial detainees are entitled to make their voices heard.
