Massachusetts Prisoners and Organizers Working for Enfranchisement and Restoration.
Three-pronged approach to restore the #right2vote to prisoners in Massachusetts:
- #DonateYourVote for the 2020 Election
- Legislator initiated efforts – S.12 & S.405
- Citizen-initiated proposed constitutional amendment.
Sign up to stay up to date on the campaign.
For Immediate Release: Mass POWER Files to Restore Right to Vote for Incarcerated MA Residents
BOSTON, September 4, 2019: Massachusetts Prisoners and Organizers Working for Enfranchisement and Restoration (Mass POWER) delivered their citizen-initiated voting rights petition to the Secretary of the Commonwealth today. The initiative would amend the Massachusetts Constitution to restore the right to vote for people currently incarcerated on felony convictions. The volunteer-led coalition has until November 20th to collect over 80,000 signatures to place the amendment on the ballot in 2022.
Massachusetts is the most recent state to disenfranchise incarcerated residents. Massachusetts prisoners had the right to vote up until 2000, when a constitutional amendment stripped incarcerated individuals of their right to vote. Derrick Washington, an incarcerated organizer with Mass POWER, declares “Universal prisoner suffrage – that being incarcerated peoples’ ability to pick people who make laws that govern structures of arrest, incarceration, and eventual release – is the only way to begin reshaping how the process of criminal justice is interpreted, which would in turn strengthen our families and build our communities.”
Volunteer organizer, Austin Frizzell, a resident of Jamaica Plain, further notes that eliminating prisoner disenfranchisement should being an essential part of reducing the harm of incarceration in Massachusetts. “We know our criminal justice system disproportionately and unjustly targets people of color, especially Black communities, and therefore it is also a system of voter repression. The right to vote is fundamental and removing it does not contribute to healing for our state,” said Frizzell. Mass POWER is aligned with national efforts—sometimes called the #Right2Vote or New Suffrage movements—to re-enfranchise citizens who have lost rights due to incarceration. Recent victories include the 2018 restoration of voting rights to 1.5 million people in Florida with past convictions and 2019 laws returning the right to vote to 77,000 on probation and parole in Nevada and 10,000 on parole in Colorado. If Massachusetts voters support the petition, the Commonwealth would re-join Maine and Vermont in maintaining voting rights independent of incarceration status. The District of Columbia is also actively considering reversing prison disenfranchisement. To get involved sign up and follow the campaign on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @MassPowerVote. For more information contact masspowervote@gmail.com.
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