Just about everyone in Guilford County – and across the nation – is gearing up to vote in the upcoming election and, if you’re reading this in a cell in one of the county’s two jails, you should get your chance to vote as well.
And you can even vote early from behind bars.
On Wednesday, Oct. 14, the Guilford County Sheriff’s Department announced that the department is working, in conjunction with a nonpartisan organization You Can Vote, to make sure that the inmates held in Guilford County – well, the ones who are legally eligible to vote at least – have an opportunity to participate in voting by absentee ballot for the upcoming November election. It’s expected to be one of the most hotly contested elections of all time from the top of the ballot to the state races to the school bond referendum and the proposed sales tax increase.
The overwhelming majority of people held in the county’s two jails are in there awaiting trials rather than serving current sentences. North Carolina citizens who’ve been convicted of a felony do lose the right to vote. However, that right can be regained once convicts complete their felony sentences including parole.
There are currently over 700 inmates in the two county jails. According to the Guilford County Sheriff’s Department, 110 of those were eligible and have been registered to vote.
The department is currently scheduling times for You Can Vote volunteers to come in to both the jail in Greensboro and the jail in High Point to serve as witnesses for the inmates signing ballots.
Before You Can Vote volunteers come in, jail staff will be handing out candidate booklets so that the inmates can learn more about the candidates.
So, roughly 15% of the 700+ are eligible?
That means 85% are convicted felons who have found their way back to jail yet again.
Let that sink in the next time someone tries to tell you how many “good” folks are incarcerated or that we need to be more lenient on this or that.
110 were eligible AND registered to vote. Unclear writing could confuse what is the truth there, whether there are 110 that are eligible to vote or if only 110 actually registered and are still eligible.
To your point though, what number of legal votes are you okay with not allowing then? Clearly 110 eligible, registered voters currently in jail you don’t give a darn about. So for them no law and order, but for business windows LAW AND ORDER, ARGGGGGHHH
I’m good with all living & legal eligible registered voters casting ballots filled out properly by the voter (with assistance for the handicapped) regardless of the voting method as long as they’re counted within the time frame established by law. Its just simple math they have 700+ there and only about 15% are eligible. Saying 85% are felons isn’t a stretch, it is a fact.
Having years of experience with that type of environment I can also say with certainty that out of those 110 only about 80 will take the effort to actually complete a ballot. For those pretrial detainees who have been in jails for a while they’re also only getting fed the biased information the media portrays making it nearly impossible to make an informed choice. This isn’t something new. People in our prisons and jails have been registered & given the opportunity to complete an absentee ballot in every election cycle for many years.
There are other reasons one may not be eligible. Immigration status, residency in another state, or mental incapacity to name a few.
Let’s not confuse this – mental incapacity means that you have, as an adult, another person as a guardian and you have filed (or had filed on your behalf) a “Petition For Adjudication Of Incompetence And Application For Appointment Of Guardian Or Limited Guardian”. I’m not a lawyer, but I think the threshold would be fairly high for a court to order this on someone.
If mental capacity was more closely monitored, we’d have a whole lot more ineligible voters this year. For that matter we’d likely have fewer candidates from both major parties as well.