Expanding Voter Eligibility in California
October 22, 2024
By: William & Mary Student Contributor
Recently, California has seen trends toward increasing voter participation at both the state and local levels.
The California legislature enacted Chapter 757 in 2016 following the decision in Scott et al. v. Bowen. This lawsuit arose after California’s Secretary of State, Debra Bowen, decided to deny voting to those who participated in community supervision programs under the 2011 Criminal Justice Realignment Act. Bowen’s decision thus limited California’s Constitutional restrictions on voting, which had already denied the right to vote to (1) those imprisoned, on parole, or convicted of a felony or (2) those adjudged mentally incompetent. In Bowen, the court reversed the Secretary’s decision and found that individuals under post-release community and mandatory supervision are eligible to vote. Furthermore, the court held that those serving a term in county jail are free to exercise their right to vote. Later, Resolution Chapter 24, Statutes of 2020 (ACA 6), was enacted to remove California’s Constitutional provision that disqualified voters if they were on parole for felonious convictions.
Despite the Legislature taking steps to expand voter eligibility, many California county prisons host vote-by-mail programs. These programs fail to cater to incarcerated persons who have difficulty accessing voter education materials. Even when incarcerated persons have access to voter education materials, studies show they lack the educational background needed to understand the materials and make an informed vote. Therefore, even with access to vote, incarcerated persons are unable to effectively participate in the voting process. Recently, ACA 4 was proposed by Assemblymember Isaac Bryan in the 2023-2024 Regular Session. This amendment proposal seeks to repeal restrictions in California’s Constitution that ban individuals from registering to vote if they are serving terms in state or federal prison.
In February of 2023, Assemblymember Isaac Bryan once again introduced a new proposal, “Voting Pilot Program: County Jails” (AB 544). The pilot program would help to raise funds for county offices in several Northern California counties to help them improve voter participation amongst people detained at county jails. With this funding, counties involved in the program would designate an administrator to act as a voting coordinator to ensure that all in-person voting at the jails comply with requirements. This includes not only helping incarcerated persons vote through distributing informational materials and providing an on-site voting poll at jails but also helping them register to vote, receiving provisional ballots, and filing for replacement ballots “upon verification that the county elections official has not received a ballot for the same election from the voter.” AB 544’s expansion of voting in jails to enable in-person voting demonstrates a huge expansion of voting access in California.
California will not be the first state to enable in-person voting in local jail facilities. Illinois, Washington, D.C., Colorado, and Texas have all made in-person voting in local jail facilities available for those detained pretrial. Even so, this initiative has local precursors in California. In 2020, Los Angeles launched the “We All Count” campaign, which increased voting registration and allowed eligible inmates to cast ballots within the local facility. This initiative continued to expand to a second facility and allowed inmates to vote in the November 2022 general election.
Currently, AB 544 has a sunset date of January 1, 2030. However, based on the success that in-person voting programs have seen at local and state levels, it looks promising that this program may be here to stay.