In-Person Voting Increases Turnout Among Incarcerated Persons: Evidence From the Cook County Jail

Abstract

The vast majority of persons incarcerated in jails are eligible to vote, but only via absentee ballot. Voting rights advocates argue that absentee-only voting results in disenfranchisement given jailers’ control over mail and the administrative burden involved in registering and requesting absentee ballots. I examine the case of the Cook County Jail, which in 2020 became one of the few jurisdictions to allow incarcerated persons to vote in-person. Using data on the ballots cast from jail, I compare the turnout between incarcerated and nonincarcerated Cook County voters, before and after the reform. I show that the reform increased the turnout between 7 and 33 percentage points depending on the election or between 170% and 440% over pre-reform baselines. These findings are not driven by fluctuations in the jail population due to the pandemic or state and local bail reforms, as excluding elections affected by these events yields similar results. In-person voting can increase voter turnout among incarcerated persons, and low voter turnout among those incarcerated in the few states allowing prison voting may be due to absentee-only participation.