Reiko Hillyer is a professor of history at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., and the author of “A Wall Is Just a Wall: The Permeability of the Prison in the Twentieth-Century United States.”
Right now, incarcerated people in Massachusetts are organizing to reclaim a right that many people outside prison walls don’t even realize they once held: the right to vote.
It might sound radical, because only two states — Maine and Vermont — allow people with felony convictions to vote from prison. But for most of the Commonwealth’s history, it wasn’t radical at all. In fact, allowing people in prison to vote was once an unremarkable part of civic life that was constitutionally protected.
In 1976, a man named Carl Velleca, serving a 25-year sentence for larceny and armed robbery at MCI-Concord, ran for local office — Concord’s Board of Selectmen. Although Velleca’s candidacy raised questions about where he and other prisoners technically resided — whether it was their hometown or the town where they were incarcerated — it never prompted a legal challenge to their fundamental right to vote. His bid for office, which did not succeed, was treated more as a curiosity than as a threat.
Frank A. Hall, the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections at the time, asserted that inmates who voted were maintaining community ties essential to their successful release. The Concord prison warden even said he’d vote for Velleca.
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That story may seem unimaginable now, but it shouldn’t. It’s a reminder that what we consider politically impossible today was once uncontroversial.
Although some other states also used to allow prisoners to vote, Massachusetts once led the nation on this issue. In 1974, the state’s Supreme Judicial Court affirmed in Evers v. Davoren that incarcerated people had the right to vote. A 1983 unanimous court ruling reaffirmed that right, declaring statutory barriers to prisoner voting unconstitutional. In that case, the court argued that voting laws should only expand, not restrict, the right to vote.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, organizations like the League of Women Voters entered prisons to encourage registration and voter awareness. Legislative Awareness Days, initiated by incarcerated organizers, became part of a broader movement to affirm the political agency of people inside. Rather than treating voting as incompatible with incarceration, Massachusetts correctional institutions saw civic engagement as part of rehabilitation.
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So what happened?
The same national tide that swept in “tough on crime” policies in the 1980s and 1990s — from “three strikes” laws to the end of parole — eventually rolled back voting rights for incarcerated people along with it.
In 1997, in response to punitive policies, prisoners in the Commonwealth organized a political action committee (PAC) to advocate for the preservation and expansion of rehabilitation, education, and drug-treatment programs. The PAC’s founders also made a case for why prisoners should keep the right to vote. “Voting is also an opportunity to acknowledge [our] debt to victims — not insult them — and begin accepting civic responsibilities in the community,” they wrote. Yet instead of being recognized as responsible civic participants, they were punished. Correctional officers threw organizing leaders into solitary confinement. Governor Paul Cellucci signed an executive order banning political fundraising from public institutions, a thinly veiled effort to silence incarcerated voices.
Then, in 2000, Massachusetts voters passed a constitutional amendment that stripped incarcerated people of their voting rights. It was one of the rare times in state history that a constitutional amendment was used to strip away civil rights from a segment of the population.
Now, 25 years later, incarcerated people are organizing once again to get their voting rights restored through a ballot initiative. And those of us outside the prison walls have an opportunity to join them. At a time when the US Supreme Court has weakened the Voting Rights Act and states are passing new voter ID laws and purging rolls, we should be alarmed. Expanding civil liberties — not curtailing them — is the foundation of a healthy democracy.
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Restoring the right to vote in prison isn’t just good policy. It’s a moral imperative. And the objections don’t hold up.
People in prison are more than the worst thing they’ve ever done. Many are lifers who have spent decades in deep reflection, pursuing education, working jobs, and building community. These are citizens who have greater civic insight than many of us on the outside.
People in prison also overwhelmingly maintain ties to the communities they come from and often return to. In 1976, Concord officials registered incarcerated voters like Velleca using their home addresses — a practice that courts ultimately upheld, reinforcing the principle that incarceration shouldn’t sever civic ties to home.
Critics often ask: Why should people who broke laws have a say in making them? However, disenfranchisement isn’t part of anyone’s sentence. It’s not connected to safety or justice. We don’t take away their right to marry, to practice religion, or to access medical care. Why voting?
And there’s nothing about confinement that justifies civic exclusion. People in nursing homes, on military bases, and even astronauts in space vote absentee. Why not people in prison?
The assumption that prisoners are inherently untrustworthy or incapable of civic judgment ignores the facts. People in prison hold a range of political beliefs. There is no evidence they would vote as a bloc or distort the system. And their lived experience within the criminal legal system offers insight that could strengthen — not threaten — our democracy.
Furthermore, there is no evidence in Maine and Vermont of widespread fraud or abuse. In fact, research from The Sentencing Project shows that civic engagement among formerly and currently incarcerated people is linked to lower recidivism and stronger reentry outcomes. Preparing for reintegration begins the day someone enters prison, not the day they leave. Voting isn’t a threat to public safety but a contributor to it.
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Massachusetts isn’t just lagging behind its own past but behind the rest of the world. In most modern democracies, prisoners retain the right to vote. South Africa registered more than 100,000 incarcerated voters for its 2024 elections. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that blanket bans on prisoner voting violate fundamental democratic norms.
The law-and-order backlash that led to mass incarceration, including the disenfranchisement of Massachusetts prisoners, is now widely seen as a mistake. Why not apply the same reckoning to voting rights behind bars? Restoring the vote to incarcerated people is not about being “soft” on crime. It’s about refusing to define people solely by their worst act. It’s about believing that democracy works best when more of us participate — not fewer.