In Illinois, thousands of incarcerated people are disenfranchised each election cycle. A coalition of voting and prisoner rights advocacy groups are working to restore their right to vote.
Chicago Votes is the lead organization behind the proposed Reintegration and Civic Empowerment (RACE) Act, or Senate Bill 3482. If passed by the Illinois House and Senate, then signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, RACE would give the right to vote to people who are incarcerated in Illinois prisons and require civic education courses be available to them while they’re incarcerated.
“The reason why it’s the norm for people in prison not to have the right to vote stems directly from slavery, Black laws and Jim Crow. It doesn’t take much intellect to see the inequities and to draw that correlation,” Chicago Votes co-executive director Stevie Valles said. The nonprofit organization aims to build an inclusive democracy by putting power in the hands of young people.
“The logic behind taking someone’s right to vote away when they’re incarcerated is just not there. It was always used as a political tool to suppress Black voices in the political system but still be able to count Black bodies in the census system where districts are drawn,” he continued.
Valles, along with policy manager Frederique Desrosiers and other Chicago Votes staffers, spent last week lobbying Illinois lawmakers in Springfield. They had hoped the RACE Act would be called for a vote during the 103rd General Assembly’s lame-duck session, a transition period during which some members in both chambers are transitioning out of office.
“So it’s, like, a week where a lot of things are able to get passed, and people can take votes that won’t affect their future run for that seat again,” Valles said, referring to the lame-duck session.
However, the bill wasn’t called for a vote. Now, they’re looking to the 104th General Assembly to pass the measure before the session ends this spring.
Chicago Votes has been advocating for this bill since 2020, but with each new legislative session, Valles said there’s always an issue that pops up. The issue for the previous legislative session that wrapped up last spring was that it fell during a presidential election year.
Pritzker’s policy team told Chicago Votes that they wanted to make the bill a priority during the lame-duck session, according to Desrosiers. The TRiiBE reached out to Pritzker’s office but hasn’t received a response.
In addition to support from Pritzker, other lawmakers on board with the RACE Act include Illinois House Speaker Emanuel Chris Welch (D-Westchester); senators Lakesia Collins (D-5th), Kimberly Lightford (D-4th), Robert Peters (D-13th), and State Rep. La Shawn Ford (D-8th).
“We know in the past, like [with] the SAFE-T Act, bills like that, that were a little bit more controversial, got passed during the lame-duck session, so we were hopeful,” Desrosiers said.
She explained that even if bills don’t move during the legislative session, the process can be accelerated by support from the governor’s office or leadership from the House or Senate calling a bill for a vote.
In the months leading up to the implementation of the SAFE-T Act, conservatives spent millions of dollars on a misinformation and fear-mongering campaign to prevent the Pretrial Fairness Act from going into effect.

“Democrats are kind of still weary and reeling from the SAFE-T Act vote, and feel like maybe there’s a lot of backlash, especially from Republicans, that I think that they’re kind of scared,” Desrosiers said.
Valles echoed that sentiment, “I just think the Democrats are scared to take some hard votes, and that’s frustrating, given the last [presidential] election cycle we just went through.”
Desrosiers added, “We see Illinois touting all these things to be a progressive state. We have a Democratic supermajority. So it’s kind of disappointing to see that they aren’t willing to take strong steps to be a leader in the nation. So that’s kind of frustrating.”
There are laws in 48 states, not including Maine or Vermont, that ban people with felony convictions from voting, which is an estimated four million people, according to a 2024 report by The Sentencing Project.
In Illinois, people who have been convicted of any crime, or are currently serving a sentence in any federal or state prison, county jail or on work release, are barred from voting in elections.
However, there are individuals who can vote: including those who’ve been released from jail on parole, mandatory supervised release, or electronic monitoring; and those being held in jail pretrial, out on bail, or bond.
In 2019, Pritzker signed Senate Bill 2090 into law, which made Cook County Jail the first jail in the U.S. to serve as a polling place for a primary or general election.

Another criminal justice reform milestone was House Bill 2541, passed in 2019 and signed by Pritzker, which requires people leaving prison in Illinois to receive three 90-minute civic classes; in 2021, a new requirement expanded this to include juvenile detention centers.
Chicago Votes participated in lobbying efforts to support both bills. The RACE Act builds on that advocacy. Though the bill didn’t advance this week, both Valles and Desrosiers said they’re feeling cautiously optimistic about the passage of the RACE Act this spring because it’s no longer an election year.
“Coming out of the election, people want action to take, and many times, people view that the only option for action one can take is voting,” Valles said. “But there are no elections next year, so we will try to channel all that ‘let’s do something energy’ that folks are hopefully reviving from the election and steer them towards what is a very serious, blatant, very clear problem.”
For Chicago native Avalon Betts-Gaston, who was wrongfully convicted and served four years in federal prison, expanding voting rights for incarcerated people allows them to be active members of their home and surrounding communities while inside. Additionally, voting is a way for incarcerated people to have an active role in decisions that determine the lives of their children.
“We have to look at voting rights outside of the limited view we tend to view them. It’s not just a matter of casting ballots. For people on the inside, it’s an extension of parenting because I get to vote on who’s on the school board. I get to vote for local electeds who get to determine whether or not I get a park or if the basketball court that my baby plays basketball on has a hoop,” said Betts-Gatson, who serves as the executive director of the Illinois Alliance for Reentry & Justice. The organization is part of a coalition of organizations and community members supporting the RACE Act.

Access to voting also aids in the rehabilitation of incarcerated people. It helps with reintegrating them after release, encouraging them to become more informed, according to Marlon Chamberlain, who spent 12 years in federal prison.
“If this system was really about rehabilitation, then why wouldn’t we want people to be educated in terms of civic engagement but then also have an opportunity to participate?” Chamberlain said. “One thing I’ve learned from my own experience of doing time is that time can be an asset or a liability, and it all depends on the resources and what you surround people around.”
Today, Chamberlain is the executive director of the Illinois Coalition to End Permanent Punishments, an organization and campaign hub for people directly impacted by the criminal legal system.
“When you have people that have time to study and really grasp what it means to be civically involved and then give them an opportunity to vote, you start to reform that person so that once that person is released, then OK, ‘now I understand why I want to vote in the local elections. I want to make sure I know who my alderman is.’”
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