By LISA LEFF
The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — His polling place doesn’t offer much privacy, and no one is actively campaigning for his vote.
Yet Derek Jackson interrupted a shower to accept the sealed ballot a lawyer pushed through the bars of the jail cell he shares with 11 other men, hoping to make a difference in the society with which he has often been at odds.
“I’m finally at the point, in jail, where I can have my voting rights back,” said Jackson, 49, who was in prison or on parole during every previous presidential contest of his adult life. “I’ve seen a lot of things on the street, and I want to keep working for people who need help, even if I can only vote on their behalf.”
Men and women awaiting trial in county jails must forego many individual rights, but voting is not one of them. Contrary to common belief, inmates awaiting trial on even the most serious criminal charges can cast ballots as long as they are not already doing time for a felony.
The logistics of voting while locked up can be cumbersome, though, which is why the San Francisco elections and sheriff’s departments spent weeks ahead of Super Tuesday encouraging inmates to register, hand-delivering ballots and picking up the completed forms.
“A lot of counties say they don’t have the resources or the time to reach out to jail populations, but we are trying to get information to people in every way we can that just because you are in jail doesn’t mean you can’t vote,” said John Arntz, the department’s director.
While unusual because of its scope and government seal of approval, the outreach effort mirrors drives undertaken by criminal justice advocates nationwide to enfranchise eligible jail inmates, as well as ex-felons who may mistakenly assume their records bar them from voting for life. Kentucky and Virginia are the only states where prior felony convictions permanently disqualify residents from voting.
“From a jail administrator’s point of view, I don’t think there could be any better indicator of somebody’s desire to be a functioning and participating member of society than somebody who wants to use the ballot box to form their government,” said Ryan King, a policy analyst with The Sentencing Project in Washington.
About 250 of San Francisco’s 2,100 jail inmates registered to vote in California’s primary election this year, “a good number since many are not eligible and know that,” said Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Eileen Hirst.
A branch of the sheriff’s department that provides legal, counseling and job information to San Francisco inmates usually acts as the go-between for the jail population and the elections office.
“We who run jails are enforcement officers, and one of the roles of government is to make voting accessible to those who are eligible, so it is merely a law enforcement role as far as I’m concerned,” Sheriff Mike Hennessey said.
The arrangement brought Charles McNulty, a member of Arntz’ staff, to the main jail two weeks ago to register inmates who weren’t already signed up to vote. Nick Gregoratos, an attorney with Prisoner Legal Services, returned on Monday to hand out their absentee ballots.
“As of Wednesday last week, I had taken them from eight or nine guys who had them already and another eight or nine screaming, ‘Where is mine?’” Gregoratos said.
One of the men Gregoratos brought a ballot to Monday was Larry White, 51, who said he has been jailed on kidnapping and robbery charges for almost three years. Talking over a blaring television and the voices of his cell mates, White said he had never been much interested in voting.
“I never thought I would, especially when you find out the politicians are the biggest crooks of all,” he said. “Once you get a chance to see what the system is all about, you really want to see a change.”
Like Jackson, Walter Watkins, 44, said he was surprised by how easy the jail was making it for him to cast his first vote for president, even if he had to do it from an isolation cell. He asked Gregoratos if he could get a sample ballot and other campaign materials so he would know how to vote on state and local ballot propositions and other lower profile contests.
“I can have an opinion on something that I am not a part of,” explained Watkins, who said he was in his fourth month of a six-month jail sentence stemming from a drug possession charge.
The growing popularity of absentee ballots has in theory made it easier than ever before for inmates to vote, said Arntz. He modeled San Francisco’s inmate voting policies after its program for hospitalized voters, which means that inmates have more generous deadlines for requesting vote-by-mail ballots than the general population.
Gregoratos, for instance, planned to return to the jail again before polls closed Tuesday to get ballots to registered inmates who just got to the jail or those he’d missed during earlier visits.
“It would be really nice if they set a ballot machine up here to vote. Maybe someday,” he said.