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| Jail doesn't bar voting, but few S.J. inmates do |
| By The Record |
| Published: 11/01/2004 |
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Michele Miller's hands are cuffed. Her ankles are fettered by leg irons. Around her waist is a chain and padlock. As an inmate at the San Joaquin County, Calif., Jail, she has few freedoms left. So she savors the one basic right democracy affords. Miller can vote in Tuesday's election. In fact, she already has -- by absentee ballot. "I always vote; it's important to me," said Miller, 43, of Stockton, incarcerated since Oct. 2 on an attempted-kidnapping charge. Stockton police say Miller grabbed a young girl in Atherton Park after attempting a similar kidnapping Sept. 23. But although Miller is in jail, she was determined to vote. She sent her ballot in last week. "That's democracy," she said. "That's what America is all about -- voting." The message seems lost on her fellow inmates. Even though California law protects the voting rights of ex-felons, those convicted of misdemeanors and those incarcerated awaiting trial, the turnout rate at the San Joaquin County Jail is near zero, according to jail records. Of approximately 1,000 inmates in the County Jail and Deuel Vocational Institution, near Tracy, Miller was the only one to request an absentee ballot. "It surprises me during a big election year like this," said Kristen Hamilton of the jail's inmate services program. Hamilton suspects many inmates are not aware they can vote. "The way the media's been pushing this election, I'm surprised more inmates don't get involved, since they don't have much to do," she said. The jail's population last week included 691 people awaiting trial on felony charges and 189 convicted of misdemeanors. Inmates' voting rights are outlined in a jail rulebook, Hamilton said. But San Joaquin County Public Defender Jerry Gleeson suspects they are "concentrating on their cases rather than the election." San Joaquin County Registrar of Voters Deborah Hench estimated she receives just 10 to 20 calls from inmates per election cycle. California law restored felons' right to vote in the 1970s, Hench said. "More are eligible to vote who don't think they are," she said. "If they're sitting in jail and not convicted, they can vote if registered." Miller feels that she's just doing her part by voting. She raised her cuffed hands to hold a telephone to speak to a reporter on the other side of a thick, glass wall. She said she'll plead not guilty when her court date comes up Thursday, but she still does not have an attorney. Waiting has been hard, she said. She's been placed in "the hole," a small isolation cell. The low turnout in San Joaquin County's jail population is disappointing to Sabrina Williams of the Advancement Project, a Washington-based advocacy group that continues to lobby for the restoration of voting rights of felons. Williams said the disenfranchisement of inmates and ex-felons is avoidable in California, since voting rights have been restored. Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, Virginia and Wyoming ban convicted felons from voting for life, and other states, including Texas and swing states Ohio and New Mexico, restrict inmates from voting. It's estimated that five million Americans, almost 30 percent of them Black, are denied the right to vote by such laws, according to researchers at Northwestern University and the University of Minnesota. Williams believes many convicted felons in California are uninformed about their voting rights. |
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