Authors Juan Haines and Kevin Sawyer are both incarcerated journalists at San Quentin prison.
“I want to be heard,” one man wrote on the back of a makeshift ballot in a simulated election held inside San Quentin state prison. Another wrote that he was voting because “I’d like to feel like a citizen; feel like I am important too.”
The total population of US prisons and jails is greater than all but four American cities. But with a few exceptions (Maine, Vermont and now Washington, DC), citizens held in state and federal prisons cannot participate in the democratic process. In California, even people on parole cannot vote, though a measure called Proposition 17 could change that this year. The thousands of men in San Quentin do not worry about violence at polling places or missing mail-in ballots. We know from the start that our votes won’t count.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
