The visitors parking lot of the Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center, a state prison within the Colorado Department of Corrections, taken on Feb. 6, 2020. (Moe Clark/Colorado Newsline)
A new report from The Sentencing Project estimates more than 18,000 Coloradans serving time for a felony conviction in prison or jail won’t be able to vote in the 2024 election.
The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that advocates minimizing imprisonment and criminalization, estimates that of those who lose their right to vote while incarcerated in Colorado, about 18% are Black and about 30% are Latino. Those percentages are higher than the percentage of each group in the population of Colorado: According to census data, about 5% of Colorado’s overall population is Black and about 23% is Latino.
According to the “Locked Out 2024” report, which used data from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, about 17,000 people in state prisons and about 1,500 people in local jails don’t have the right to vote while incarcerated for a felony conviction in Colorado. The report includes only people incarcerated in Colorado state prisons and local jails, not federal prisons.
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While the “Locked Out 2024” report looks at how people with criminal convictions around the country are disenfranchised, The Sentencing Project released a Colorado-specific report in April that said the state bans Black residents from voting at a rate seven times that of white residents.
Kyle Giddings, civic engagement coordinator at the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, said the numbers show how disproportionately people of color are excluded from voting due to being incarcerated.
“This is not only an issue of making sure people have a voice in their democracy, it’s a racial justice issue, making sure people that are being disproportionately punished by the criminal justice system, which we’ve seen historically happen across the nation and here in Colorado, have a voice in the reforms,” Giddings said.
He noted that a measure on the Colorado ballot this year is related to parole, an issue that directly affects people within the criminal justice system but on which those incarcerated on felony convictions will have no say. There’s also a ballot measure that would create an exception to the right to bail for criminal defendants accused of first-degree murder.
“Ninety-fiver percent of people that are in prisons will go home one day, and they should be able to have a voice in their communities that they’re going home to,” Giddings said. “It just doesn’t make sense to cut out folks who are working on rehabilitating themselves and working on becoming good citizens from being part of the Democratic system and having their voices heard by being able to vote.”
Colorado returns the right to vote to people with felony convictions once they are finished serving their sentence. Maine, Vermont and Puerto Rico never take away the right to vote.
The Colorado Legislature approved a new law that will require certain counties to implement a day of in-person voting for those who are eligible in local jails. Denver already held in-person voting in its jails prior to the new law, and for its 2023 municipal elections the confined voter turnout was just under 80%, compared to a 38% turnout for the entire election.
“We have the proof to show that they care about what’s happening in their communities,” Giddings said. “We’ve had many races across Colorado be decided by only a couple hundred votes.”
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