Recommendations for Implementing Jail Voting: Identifying Common Themes
This guide is intended for advocates, organizers, and practitioners working across America to facilitate the voting process for eligible voters in jails.
This guide is intended for advocates, organizers, and practitioners working across America to facilitate the voting process for eligible voters in jails. Presently, about 427,000 individuals held in local jails nationwide have not been convicted of a crime. As such, they are eligible to vote — but they often encounter a range of barriers.
As more and more legal scholars, policymakers, election officials, and advocates look to expand access to voting for jail-based populations, several of them have issued reports with recommendations and best practices. By synthesizing their various insights and proposals, we aim to provide an annotated list of all the recommendations from the reports and identify the most common ones. Organizations, practitioners, and advocates can use this guide as a centralized resource to view current best practices for jail-based voting as identified by their colleagues. While not exhaustive, this document offers a starting point for practitioners eager to engage in this work.
Terms of Engagement – Trump and His Billionaire Allies Make their Move on the Media
Harvard Kennedy School Shorenstein Center director and former TIME editor Nancy Gibbs joins co-hosts Archon Fung and Stephen Richer to discuss the impacts of billionaire media consolidation and pressure from the Trump administration on the flow of information vital to democracy.
Terms of Engagement – The Bombs to Ballots Fantasy: Can the Iran War Lead to Democracy?
Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellow and Boston College Associate Professor Ali Kadivar joins Terms of Engagement hosts Archon Fung and Stephen Richer to discuss the prospects for democracy in Iran now that the country is at war with the U.S. and Israel.
Terms of Engagement—What If Millennials and Gen Z Leaders Replaced the Gerontocracy?
Amanda Litman, the president and founder of Run for Something, joins co-hosts Archon Fung and Stephen Richer to talk about why she believes democracy needs a generational makeover.
The Present — and Future — of Alternatives to Police
Allen Lab Affiliate Benjamin A. Barsky examines alternative emergency response programs — arguing for a democratic model of public safety governance in which responses to nonviolent incidents are shared across government and civil society rather than dominated by police.
Terms of Engagement—How Does Our Civil Rights History Shape the Future of American Democracy?
Archon Fung and Stephen Richer invite Harvard Kennedy School Professor and civil rights advocate Cornell William Brooks to assess the evolution of America’s historical narrative and what implications history has on our contemporary political context.
Allen Lab Fellow Spotlight: Why a People-Centered Approach to American Democracy Matters Now
Allen Lab Policy Fellow Christine Slaughter makes the case that democracy must be understood through people’s lived experiences and agency, not just institutions.