NAACP Organizes Voter Registration Drive at Maine State Prison

For immediate release Monday, May 19

PORTLAND – Leaders of the NAACP, working with party officials from Maine’s three recognized political parties, will travel to Warren on Wednesday morning, May 21, to register voters at the Maine State Prison. NAACP leaders, along with officials of the Republican, Democratic and Green Independent parties, working with Corrections Commissioner Martin Magnusson, will hold two voter registration drives at the prison prior to this year’s November election.

“The NAACP will be 100 years old next year,” said Rachel Talbot Ross, president of the Portland chapter, “and it’s a continuing part of our mission to protect the voting rights of all people, including those in prison. We want to make sure those rights are made real, and not just written on paper.”

One of the NAACP’s three Maine branches is based in the Warren prison, where corrections officials estimate that 7 percent of the inmates are of African descent. By comparison, 0.7 percent of Maine’s population is of African descent.

Maine and Vermont are the only two states that allow prisoners to cast ballots, a right that has existed since Maine became a state in 1820.  The NAACP, in cooperation with the Maine Civil Liberties Union and the political party officials, are working to make sure that prisoners can exercise that right guaranteed under Maine law.

“This has been an effective collaboration with the prison officials and with the party leaders, who are only working to register voters, not to promote a political agenda,” said Ross.

It is not only those behind bars who are barred from voting in most other states. Former prisoners, and those on parole are denied the franchise in many states. According to estimates from the American Civil Liberties Union, more than 5 million people are disenfranchised because of their current or previous incarceration. That fact puts America in a minority among Western democracies, which mostly restore voting rights to people who have served their sentences.

“People behind bars in Maine do not lose the right, or the responsibility, to take part in the political process,” said Zachary Heiden, Legal Director of the MCLU.  “Maine’s voter-rights protections benefit all Mainers, not just those in jail, because taking part in political life can play an important role in prisoners’ rehabilitation”

Note to editors: The first of two voter registration drives is scheduled for Wednesday, May 21 at 9 a.m.

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