Illinois could become the first state in the nation to restore voting rights that were stripped from people serving prison sentences.
Under proposed legislation backed by a coalition of voting rights and legal justice reform advocates, Illinois would join only Maine, Vermont, Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.— where the voting rights of incarcerated people have never been revoked.
Since 2020, Chicago Votes—a civic engagement advocacy organization—has pushed for the passage of the proposed Reintegration and Civic Empowerment (RACE) Act.
If passed by the Illinois House and Senate and signed by Governor Pritzker, the RACE act would restore voting rights to an estimated 35,000 to 50,000 Illinoisans.
To comply with Illinois’ constitution, the proposed law would restore voting rights to people in correctional institutions across the state after a 14 day suspension.
Chicago Votes’ campaign
Incarcerated people helped write the legislation through the DePaul Behind the Walls Participatory Civics Collaborative think tank at Stateville Correctional Center, Frederique Desrosiers, Chicago Votes policy manager, told TCR.
In 2019, the organization helped pass legislation expanding voting access for people detained in jail, making the Cook County Jail the first jail in the country to serve as a polling place. That same year, it also backed legislation creating peer-led civics courses for people preparing to leave prison after research found many were unaware that their voting rights are automatically restored upon release.
Desrosiers views voting as a racial justice issue—more than half of Illinois’ prison population is Black—as well as a way to implement successful reintegration into the community.
Desrosiers views the RACE Act as part of a broader effort to expand voter participation at a time when voting rights have narrowed nationally.
“We’re at a moment where it’s really important for us to be looking at how do we expand our democracy,” Desrosiers said. “We have opportunity in Illinois to expand the electorate and empower people through the ballot box in a way that the national landscape is not.”
She pointed to recent court decisions that have weakened key provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act and argued Illinois has an opportunity to move in the opposite direction by broadening access to the ballot.
“This legislation doesn’t erase anyone’s sentence or consequences. It just simply allows them to be part of the civic process,” Desrosiers said. “And we know that that is actually part of accountability and successful reentry.”
Advocates who support the bill
Illinois Coalition to End Permanent Punishments (ENDPP) director of policy Gregory Chambers worked for years as a police officer in Chicago. He approached his job with a punitive mindset, and said he believed in “locking people up and throwing away the key.”
Then, he was incarcerated in an Illinois Department of Corrections facility.
While serving a sentence, Chambers said he came to see the people around him not simply as offenders, but as neighbors, family members and individuals shaped by complex circumstances.
Many, he said, came from the same communities he had once patrolled as a police officer.
“It was a humanization, a mass humanization inside of my mind. At one point in my life, I villainized people who committed crimes without searching for reasons.”
Now, as a legal and social justice advocate, Chambers seeks to bring awareness to the fact that incarcerated people remain members of families and communities, continuing to shape the places they come from.
People in prison are counted in the U.S. Census, he told TCR, meaning their populations are considered when determining how federal funding is allocated to their communities. Yet, despite influencing the distribution of public resources, they have no voice in choosing the elected officials who represent their interests—a contradiction he said undermines democratic representation.
“These are people who actually want a chance, and they weren’t given a chance,” Chambers said.
How Illinois compares to other states
Porter said Illinois falls somewhere in the middle nationally when it comes to felony disenfranchisement. While Maine and Vermont allow people to vote while incarcerated, many states permanently or temporarily restrict voting rights after a felony conviction.
Research confirms that voting is a pro-social behavior that reduces recidivism, in the same category as education, working, and family connection, Porter told TCR.
“Voting is a proxy for civic involvement, civic engagement, so people being engaged in their overall community,” Porter said. “Effective community members are likely to not recidivate and to engage in crime-breaking that would result in their return to prison.”
The United States takes a far more punitive approach to incarcerated voting rights than other Western democracies, Porter said, where people do not automatically lose their right to vote in countries like France and England.
Porter and colleagues at the Sentencing Project conducted an analysis of modern democracies and felony disenfranchisement, the “Out of Step Report,” finding the U.S. an extreme outlier. Seventy-three of 138 countries studied never or rarely denied a person’s right to vote because of a conviction, and when they did, it was because of election-related offenses.
South Africa, in reworking their constitution after the fall of apartheid, developed an affirmative constitution, and declared that in a modern democracy people should have the right to vote.
Why the bill has stalled
Desrosiers said the bill stalled during the most recent legislative session because of a lack of political interest and concerns about its constitutionality. Chicago Votes is now seeking to advance the RACE Act again and is confident the legislation is constitutional.
Key Democratic lawmakers, including state Sen. Robert Peters and state Rep. Justin Slaughter, along with the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus and the Illinois Legislative Latino Caucus, have voiced support for the bill.
But Desrosiers said the bill continues to face resistance from some legislators, particularly those representing politically competitive districts or communities with large law enforcement constituencies. He argued that political fallout following the passage of Illinois’ SAFE-T Act made some lawmakers more hesitant to support criminal justice legislation, saying they are reluctant to take “hard votes” that could alienate moderate or conservative constituents. Other opponents, he said, believe voting rights should be restored only after a person has completed their prison sentence as part of the punishment.
Looking ahead
Desrosiers said supporters see the RACE Act as part of a broader effort to expand democratic participation at a time when voting rights are under increasing scrutiny nationwide. Rather than viewing incarceration as a reason to exclude people from civic life, he said, the legislation recognizes that citizenship continues even while someone is serving a sentence.
The right to vote is tied to a model of rehabilitation, according to Desrosiers.
“If our system is really supposed to be about rehabilitating people,” Desrosiers said. “We need to recognize people who are incarcerated as full citizens.”