Eligibility to Vote
In countries where the civil right to vote is maintained for all or certain classes of prisoners during the period of incarceration (see Legal Reasons for Deprivation), these rights are illusory unless facilities can be provided for eligible prisoners to vote. There are some basic questions to be resolved in providing voting facilities for prisoners, including:
- at which address do they register to vote--at the address of the prison, which if large, may affect voting patterns, or at their last or some other civil address?
- how are prisoners provided with the opportunity to register to vote and do they appear on special or normal voters lists?
- where there are complicated legislative provisions for the classes of prisoners and convicted persons who remain qualified to vote, how can accurate data on which prisoners fall within such classes be obtained?
Planning Issues
How best to organise voting for prisoners will depend on whether there are general special voting facilities available within the election system, such as early voting, mail voting, absentee voting, or use of mobile voting stations. Where voting facilities can be made available to prisoners, there are some planning considerations that will require specific responses, including:
- assessing the number of prisoners in prison locations who are eligible and may wish to vote, through consultation with justice system officials and prison superintendents;
- using prisoners aid and welfare groups and prison authorities to inform prisoners of voting procedures and facilities that will be available--relying solely on prison authorities is not recommended as they may have some resistance to disseminating information on such rights.
In-Person Voting
For larger prisons, it may be effective to place a special voting station at the prison on voting day, or have a mobile voting station visit the prison either during any early voting period or on voting day (see Other Special Voting Arrangements for general discussion of mobile voting stations). Polling officials for these tasks need to be carefully chosen to ensure that they are suitable to work in a prison environment. Clear arrangements will need to be made with prison authorities for such methods:
- to ensure access for all prisoners wishing to vote;
- to ensure that adequate security for polling officials can be provided by prison authorities;
- to organise voting times in line with established prison routines.
Where in-person voting takes place in prisons, it may be difficult to arrange for observation by party or candidate representatives. Using an absentee voting-style enveloped ballot for all votes (see Absentee Voting), with the ballot sealed in an envelope and accompanied by voter's identity verification so that eligibility to vote can later be established in the presence of observers, may be the preferable method.
Mail Voting
Alternatively, prisoners could apply to be provided with ballots by mail, which they would complete and return to the relevant electoral management body office. There may be significant problems with this method, such as:
- prisoners may be easily subject to intimidation in the manner in which they vote, and voting by mail, with no independent polling officials, party or candidate representatives or observers present might allow such intimidation to occur unnoticed;
- mail entering and leaving prisons is often inspected by prison authorities, and unless arrangements can be made to ensure that ballot envelopes are not opened during this process, there is no guarantee that prisoners' mail votes will remain secret.
However, voting by mail may be the only way of dealing cost-effectively with small eligible voter populations in prisons. Liaison with prison authorities in providing prisoners with whatever application forms may be needed for mail ballots, and ensuring that voting material is swiftly processed through prison postal systems, will also be necessary.
