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Incarcerated Californians can’t vote. A prison held an election anyway

An estimated 4 million US citizens are barred from voting because they have a felony conviction. That includes most Americans serving prison sentences.

But last week at San Quentin, the 172-year-old prison in the San Francisco Bay Area, residents had a rare opportunity to weigh in on a US election where so much is on the line.

As incarcerated residents jogged on the yard and played pickleball, dozens stopped by the prison’s education department and slid paper ballots into a locked metal box with an American flag and the word “vote” painted on it.

The voters were participating in a mock election, organized by Juan Moreno Haines, a journalist incarcerated at San Quentin, and Mount Tamalpais College (MTC), a liberal arts institution based at the prison.

“It’s important for me to have a voice, especially if it’s being heard on the outside,” said Michael Scott, 45, who is due to be released next year after having been incarcerated for more than two decades, before casting his vote.

California, like most US states, prohibits incarcerated people with felonies from voting, affecting more than 90,000 people in state prisons. The US is a global leader in its incarceration rate and an outlier in its sweeping disenfranchisement; a recent report identified more than 70 countries with no or very few restrictions on voting based on criminal records. Roughly 1.7% of the US voting-age population can’t vote, with Black Americans disproportionately excluded and restrictions potentially affecting election results.

For San Quentin’s election, MTC, which recently became the first US accredited college exclusively operating behind bars, directed incarcerated students in its American government class to design ballots, choosing which races and initiatives to poll.

MTC sent all 3,247 residents a ballot. After a week of voting, 341 ballots had been returned, representing 10.5% of the population. Fifteen volunteers from MTC and the League of Women Voters tallied the results: Kamala Harris won 57.2% of votes, and Donald Trump won 28.2%. Claudia De la Cruz of the Peace and Freedom party, a socialist ticket, won 3.5% of votes; the Green party’s Jill Stein won 2.6%; Robert F Kennedy Jr won 2.1%; and Chase Oliver, a libertarian, won 0.3%.

Men in blue prison outfits sitting in chair labeled MTC

In the California senate race, Adam Schiff, the Democratic candidate, defeated Republican Steve Garvey with 33.7% of votes, though nearly half of respondents left this question blank. Nearly 60% favored Prop 5, which would boost affordable housing funding; 78% favored Prop 32, which would increase the minimum wage; and 57.2% rejected Prop 36, which would increase penalties for certain drug and theft crimes.

Prop 6 would change the state constitution to abolish forced prison labor, making it a high-stakes measure for incarcerated people. Just more than 77% of respondents backed it.

The state of California, like most others in the US, allows for incarcerated people to be forced to work against their will. California profits from this form of involuntary servitude, with residents providing vital services for negligible wages. Most people in prison currently make less than $0.75 (£0.58) an hour for their jobs.

Prop 6 is meant to allow incarcerated people to choose their jobs and prohibit prisons from punishing those who refuse an assignment. Dante Jones, 41, said he wished he could vote for Prop 6 on 5 November: “We’ve got legalized plantations … They say they want us to be citizens, they want to rehabilitate us, but then they don’t do anything that allows that to happen. Technically, by the constitution, we’re slaves and they can whip our backs.”

Jones said he hopes if Prop 6 passes, incarcerated people can earn better wages to afford commissary, including food.

Jones’ assessment of the presidential race was grim: “I think we’re losing either way.” He reluctantly supported Harris despite her prosecutorial record and reputation for harshly punishing Black defendants: “She ain’t for her people. Do you know how many Black and brown people she put in prison? … She’s gonna be like a Bill Clinton, a conservative Democrat who is tough on crime.” Despite those misgivings, he couldn’t stomach supporting Trump: “Since he’s been in politics, he’s been courting racist white people who think that people who aren’t white are taking their country.”

Jaime Joseph Jaramillo, 53, said he supported Trump, appreciating his promise of mass deportations to “get rid of the drug cartels” and favoring him on foreign policy: “I want him to bomb Iran and drill, drill, drill.” He expressed sympathy for Palestinians, but said: “I want him to take out Hamas.”

Nate Venegas, 47, said he, too, favored Trump because “our system needs somebody who’s not a politician”. He thinks Trump could be more swayed on prison reform, citing the former president’s decision to pardon a woman’s drug offense after lobbying by Kim Kardashian while he was in office. But he also called Trump a “clown” and said he disliked his vigorous support of capital punishment: “I don’t believe there should be a death penalty. I don’t believe a man should kill another man.”

Scott voted for Harris “because she gives me something to look forward to. Trump hasn’t given me anything that he plans to do, except lock down the borders. We have problems with homelessness, jobs and climate change.”

Gabriel Moctezuma, 32, said he considered Harris “the lesser of two evils” and supported her on reproductive rights and immigration: “I think there would be a lot of progressive changes. There have been a lot of human rights taken away from people and she’ll bring some of those policies back.” But he worries about divisions in the country: “No matter who wins, this country is going to be split and I’m really hoping that there’s not the same amount of violence as January 6.”

On their ballots, some offered handwritten notes about why they voted:

“We have not always had the right to vote. So I would like to cast my vote for each of my [African American] ancestors that was denied access.”

“I only ever voted once in my life and I want to do so again.”

“Democracy is at stake.”

“I want to feel like I am a part of history.”

“[I’ve] been in prison for 29 years and never had an opportunity to vote.”

Vermont, Maine and Washington DC are the only places in the US where all incarcerated people can vote.

Amy Jamgochian, the chief academic officer at MTC, said the disenfranchisement of incarcerated people was a reminder that the US is “very confused as a society about what incarceration is for”.

“Is it for depriving people of humanity and rights? Will that help them? Are we trying to help them? Or are we just trying to warehouse them? If [the goal] is rehabilitation, then I don’t think we want to dehumanize them. We want to actually deeply respect their humanity, including giving them the right to vote.”

Venegas, who has been incarcerated for 25 years and is part of a civic engagement group at San Quentin, said he did feel society’s views on the purpose of the criminal justice system are shifting. He noted how, 20 years ago, the system was primarily focused on punishment, with little interest in getting people ready to come home.

Last year, the California governor, Gavin Newsom, renamed San Quentin a “rehabilitation center”, pledging to turn the prison into a complex resembling a college campus focused on programming and re-entry.

It’s just another reason why efforts like the mock election matter, Venegas argued. “People are starting to listen to us and care about having us as neighbors when we get out,” he said. “So our voices really matter … and I’d give anything to be able to vote and have a say.”