The Supreme Court says that people held in jails who are legally innocent have a right to vote. In reality, that’s often impossible.

On Election Day, approximately 448,000 legally innocent people will be held in more than 3,000 local jails across the United States. Since they have not been convicted of a crime, they are eligible to vote. But few will get the chance to exercise that right.

In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that people who are held in jail and haven’t been convicted of a crime maintain their right to vote. However, because the court did not require jails to provide people with voting booths or write-in ballots, only a tiny percentage of incarcerated people who are eligible to vote actually do. Many people who are detained pretrial are not even aware that they can still vote. This is understandable, because it is sadly common for people convicted of crimes to lose the right to vote after being released from prison, an injustice that many states have moved to rectify in recent years. Even if people who are incarcerated pretrial are aware that they can still vote, the logistical obstacles are often insurmountable. In 2022, the Prison Policy Initiative could locate only seven jails across the whole country that offered in-person voting.

De facto disenfranchisement due to pretrial detention has a disproportionate effect on racially and economically marginalized communities, depriving them of needed political power. Pervasive overpolicing and criminalization of Black communities nationwide helped drive the number of people held in jail while awaiting trial up more than 433 percent between 1970 and 2015.

People experiencing poverty are also disproportionately affected. In many parts of the United States, money bail systems criminalize poverty by forcing people who are legally innocent, but cannot afford to buy their freedom, to sit in jail before the their cases are decided. Nearly 40 percent of people in the United States are unable to easily cover a $400 emergency expense, let alone the $10,000 average bail set on a felony case or the 10 percent partially secured option of $1,000.

Read the full article about voting rights for people in jail by Erica Bryant at Vera Institute of Justice.