Activists are pushing for a polling site in the Dallas County jail by the November election. But it’s unclear whether that will happen — not all officials are on board, or even sure it’s possible.
The Dallas County sheriff’s office won’t say whether or not it is open to the idea.
“The Dallas Sheriff’s Office has standard operation procedures in place to make sure people charged to our care can vote,” spokesperson Jasmyn Carter said.
The effort follows the placement of a polling station in the Harris County Jail, the first of its kind in Texas. The county has used the site for multiple elections since last November and has no plans of dropping it, said Harris County sheriff’s office spokesperson Tebben Lewis.
Some Dallas County commissioners support putting a polling place in the jail. Others feel that with personnel shortages, logistical questions and failed inspections racking the jail, trying to host a polling site doesn’t top the list of priorities.
“I’m having enough problems just trying to get the staff to run the jail,” said Commissioner John Wiley Price, who chairs the jail population and maintenance committees. “[A polling site] is less than last on my list.”
Advocates acknowledge the challenges but point to what they say is the real issue: political will.
“Some of the biggest concerns may be around logistics, maybe within the jail, which really prefaces to, is this something we want to do?” said Carvell Bowens, a lead organizer with Texas Organizing Project. “But this is something we have to do. We can’t just stand by.”
Harris County’s success led to efforts in other Texas counties. Several groups, including nonprofits such as Move Texas and Texas Organizing Project, sent a letter to Dallas County officials in May about making it happen here.
“We just thought, let’s do it here in Dallas … let’s fight the good fight for those who are incarcerated,” said Andrea Flores, an organizer with MOVE Texas, adding that a similar effort is underway for the Bexar County Jail in San Antonio.
“Access” vs. “accessibility”
Poor access to the ballot and voter suppression have long been issues in Texas, but remedies rarely foreground the incarcerated, something advocates for the polling site hope to change.
“A lot of times when we talk about voting rights, almost always incarcerated folks are left out of that conversation,” said Dania Hindi, DFW field manager for Texas Rising. “Sometimes it’s because people don’t know that even incarcerated people have the right to vote, and that’s why this work is important.”
About 75% of the roughly 6,000 inmates in Dallas County’s jail on any given day have not yet gone to trial or been convicted, and if they have never been convicted of a felony, they have the right to a ballot.
Currently, their only option is to vote by mail, which requires an application to be sent to county officials weeks ahead of time. Supporters of the polling site say having the opportunity to vote in person on election day will increase access and turnout.
“There’s a difference between having access and it being accessible to people,” said Gabrielle Tilley, who works with Hindi at Texas Rising.
County Judge Clay Jenkins said he supports the polling site because “people don’t plan ahead of time to go to jail,” and if someone finds themselves in a cell after the deadline to apply for a mail-in ballot, they’ve just lost their opportunity.Effectively, they are being disenfranchised, he said.
“I don’t want a situation where somebody can’t participate if we couldn’t fix it for them,” he said.
Jenkins pointed to Texas’ frequent rejection of mail-in ballots, the result of a restrictive voting law state Republicans passed last year, as another reason to give inmates the option to vote in person.
Measures in the new law included banning public officials from distributing mail-in ballots and altering ID requirements for voting by mail, and they seem to have had an effect: More than 24,000 mail-in ballots were thrown out in the state primaries earlier this year — 1 in 8 ballots sent in by mail.
Commissioner Elba Garcia, who chairs the jail facilities committee, also supports the polling site but recognizes the logistical challenges.
“For me, it comes down to voter access,” she said. “If we can get eligible inmates who are registered to vote a way to vote in person and do it safely and securely, then it’s our obligation to make sure that every eligible voter has the opportunity to vote.”
Logistical hurdles
Elections administrator Michael Scarpello said his department is open to the idea but needs more insight from the sheriff’s office about how it would work.
“We would be willing to work with the sheriff to try to add this location for the upcoming November election,” he said in an email. “However, we do not have enough information about the logistics of the jail and other potential limitations to know for sure whether doing so would be practical.”
One potential issue is the layout of the jail and whether it readily facilitates inmates using the site — the jail contains multiple detention centers housed in different buildings. State law requires the site to be accessible to non-inmates as well, meaning there would need to be a public-facing polling machine in addition to a secure machine that inmates would use.
On top of figuring out how to manage the site, jail management is under increased scrutiny after the facility failed its last two inspections and is treading water when it comes to staffing.
“We’ve got personnel challenges. We’re probably 150, 200 detention officers down,” said Price.
Advocates point to Harris County as an example for overcoming roadblocks, ranging from machine placement to making sure inmates have the IDs they need to vote.
Some county officials question the degree of impact the site could have in Dallas given initial turnout numbers in the Harris County jail. They point instead to the need to expand voter participation throughout the city.
Only 96 inmates, out of close to 8,000 who were eligible to vote, used the Harris County jail polling site when it was first rolled out last year, the Houston Chronicle reported. But there was also a major jump in inmates who voted by mail, indicating an increased awareness of their right to a ballot.
Price isn’t impressed.
“I’m supposed to give the energy, when I’ve got 400,000 people out there with voter registration cards who aren’t voting? And I’m gonna go fishing for 50 or 100 people? Are you kidding me?” he said. “Fish where there are fish.”
When it comes to voting access, Price said his priority is figuring out how to increase the low registered voter turnout in the county. He points to barriers such as the lack of public transportation options to polling sites.
But advocates counter that expected turnout among inmates isn’t the primary issue — access is. And at a time when the city is considering the adoption of a racial equity plan, they say that the issue of voting access for county jail inmates, who are disproportionately Black and Latino, is especially relevant.
“There’s been all this conversation throughout the city of Dallas about racial equity; this plays directly into that,” said Bowens, of the Texas Organizing Project. “But this goes even deeper … this goes into constitutional rights.”
