Public Advocate Jumaane Williams speaks on Intro 797 for voting in city jails

And we'll now be resuming the agenda with the general orders discussion, beginning with public advocate Jumaane Williams.

Followed by Hanif.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

I'm here to speak on an unrelated bill, Intro 797.

I know many of us are thinking about the South when we think of black and brown voters disenfranchised, but for some of us, we don't have to look that far just into the East River.

Thank you, Speaker, men and the council for voting on this bill today.

There are close to 7,000 people detained on Rikers Island, most of them who are eligible to vote.

Though people who have been convicted of felony cannot vote while incarcerated, most people on Rikers are being detained pre-trial or serving time for misdemeanors and therefore are eligible to cast a ballot.

Despite this, only a fraction of the incarcerated population in the jails vote.

As the majority of the Rikers population is black and brown, it's hard not to hear the echoes of Jim Crow and this effect of disenfranchisement of thousands of potential voters.

Though volunteers can help people on Rikers register to vote, it is still the responsibility of the BOE and the DOC to deliver absentee ballots to the jail population and to count those completed ballots.

This seems straightforward, but often isn't.

Advocates report that BOE routinely rejects completed registration forms, absentee ballots,

requests and complaints.

completed ballots from eligible incarcerated New Yorkers.

In the outside world, a person's ballot who's rejected would be notified and they would have the opportunity to address any issues.

The same is often not true of those on Rikers Island.

In practice, only some of those who requested a ballot receive it, and only some of those ballots are counted, leaving only a small percentage of the eligible population actually able to vote.

This would not be acceptable in the outside world, and we should not accept it in the right as either.

Today, the City Council is voting on legislation that gives us a better scope of voting landscape inside Rikers.

My bill, Intro 797, which I co-introduced with Councilmember Brooks Powers, would require the Department of Education to report annually on voter registration inside city jails, including the number of completed voter registration forms,

disaggregated by facility and demographic information, as well as the numbers of absentee ballots distributed to incarcerated people.

Civil rights, including voter rights, are not optional.

Just because a person is incarcerated does not mean they do not have a vested interest in their communities, including who represents them in government.

Voting is one of a number of pro-social behaviors associated with reduced recidivism.

So ensuring that our incarceration population can vote, we should, and I thank everyone in the House.

Speaker, Councilman Brooks-Powell, my staff, Veronica Aves, Rosie Mendez, Jeffrey Sivari, and Saffron from my office.