Secretary of the Commonwealth William Galvin will be required to produce legally mandated data about voting in jails and prisons following the settlement of a lawsuit against him. The data is expected to show whether thousands of eligible incarcerated voters have been able to cast ballots in recent elections.
“Without the report that the Secretary of the Commonwealth was obligated to submit and make public under the VOTES Act’ we don’t actually know whether those people are being included in the democratic process or shut out,” said Brooke Simone, an attorney at Lawyers for Civil Rights who is lead counsel on the case.
The 2022 VOTES Act mandated that Galvin’s office release reports no later than six months after each presidential, regular state primary or biennial state election. Deadlines for the last two elections passed with no data produced, despite numerous non-litigation-based attempts to gather the reports, Simone said.
For advocates, data transparency concerning incarcerated voting is just “the tip of the iceberg,” said DeAnza Cook, a petitioner on the lawsuit and a board member of Healing Our Land, a Boston-based nonprofit that supports current and formerly incarcerated people.
“We see firsthand that just because the VOTES Act has been passed and enacted as law, it doesn’t mean that it’s actually being followed by the people who have been put in charge,” Cook said.
Before filing the lawsuit, co-counsel with the nonpartisan, nonprofit Campaign Legal Center sent a letter offering to support the secretary’s office in gathering the necessary data to release the report. The center did not receive a response, Simone said.
In line with the settlement, Galvin will be required to provide the data reports from the last two elections by June 1. The office is also required to report to the case’s counsel and petitioners every two months until March 2027 with compliance updates, said Kate Uyeda, counsel with the Campaign Legal Center.
Galvin’s office has also agreed to improve its data collection and organizational methods, a change advocates hope to work collaboratively with the state in implementing, Uyeda added.
Advocates with the Jail-Based Voting team of the Democracy Behind Bars Coalition (DBBC), a Massachusetts-based incarcerated rights advocacy group, currently help eligible incarcerated voters register and submit ballots through its system, but would like to see that process replicated officially.
“I think in passing the VOTES Act, our goal was that each institutional facility will have a designated voting officer and that person would maintain all of this information,” said Elly Kalfus, a volunteer coordinator with the Jail-Based Voting team.
The team is facilitated through a Harvard College impact grant to the Empowering Descendant Communities (EDC) to Unlock Democracy initiative.
The case counsel and petitioners have pointed to incarcerated eligible individuals who weren’t able to vote because they didn’t receive their ballots or didn’t know they were eligible. Among these incarcerated voters are thousands who are awaiting trial, serving misdemeanor sentences, or are civilly committed, Simone said.
Volunteers and advocates outside the carceral system have been “filling in the gaps” in areas like civic education and determining voter eligibility, Cook added.
The “gold star” vision for many voting advocates is a system where eligible incarcerated voters must opt out of voting instead of opting in, said Franklin Hobbs, a petitioner on the case and founder of Healing our Land.
Hobbs said sheriffs should communicate electronically with Galvin’s office about the eligibility of people housed at each facility and create absentee ballots in their names to ensure they are given ample opportunity to cast their votes.
“There’s so many portals for us to be able to engage in our democracy that you really have to be intentional not to do it on the outside,” Hobbs said. He added that ideally, infrastructure will notify each eligible incarcerated voter of their right to vote. “That’s the vision.”
A Massachusetts ballot question that passed in 2000 amended the Massachusetts Constitution to remove the right to vote for incarcerated people with felony convictions. But a January 2025 state Senate bill presented by Sen. Liz Miranda in coalition with EDC would change the law to restore their right to vote in municipal and federal elections, said Kalfus.
If the bill is signed into law, it could resolve issues about tracking voter eligibility, Cook said.
The bill is currently under review by the committee on Senate Ways and Means, with no estimate for when it might reach the Senate floor.
With some 400 bills waiting in the committee and only seven months to review them after fiscal budget proceedings end in May, the fight to get the bill on the floor is an uphill battle, said Justin “Rico” Rodriguez, a petitioner on the lawsuit.
While issues monitoring voter eligibility remain, the data released in accordance with the recent lawsuit’s settlement will make a “huge difference” in advocacy efforts to help incarcerated voters.
“This case — we’re talking a lot about data — but it’s real people and the coalition is in jails in Boston with these people every single week,” Simone said. “They’re hearing about how important the right to vote is to them.”
Despite agreeing to a settlement, the lawsuit remains pending until Nov. 1. If Galvin violates the agreement or remains out of compliance with the VOTES Act, further litigation could be pursued, Simone said.
This story was produced in partnership between the Bay State Banner and the Boston University Department of Journalism.
