| County | Elected Office | Number of Elections |
|---|---|---|
| San Bernardino | School Board Member | 14 |
| Fresno | School Board Member | 11 |
| Fresno | City Council | 9 |
| San Joaquin | School Board Member | 9 |
| Kings | City Council | 4 |
| San Bernardino | State Assembly | 3 |
| San Joaquin | City Council | 3 |
| San Bernardino | City Council | 2 |
| San Bernardino | Mayor | 2 |
| San Joaquin | Mayor | 2 |
| Fresno | Local Measure | 1 |
| Kings | School Board Member | 1 |
| Yuba | County Supervisor | 1 |
| Yuba | Local Measure | 1 |
| Yuba | School Board Member | 1 |
Our analysis found that, in these 5 counties there were 54 local elections in 2018 that could have been influenced by parolees if they had the right to vote.
San Bernardino County and Fresno County both had 21 local election contests that were won by margins small enough to be influenced by the number of would-be parolee voters.
Overall, local school board elections and city council races were the two election contests that could be most influenced by the passage of Prop 17.
We know that, just like the general population, there is no guarantee all parolees would vote in every election (or all vote the same way). However, if parolees are not eligible to vote, no campaign or organization is going to spend time and resources doing voter outreach to them. Campaigns spend time trying to activate eligible voters that could sway the election in their favor. These local elections demonstrate that parolee voters could make a difference in election outcomes if they were activated.
Even more importantly, parolees who are eligible voters have “done their time” and deserve to access their civil rights. The local election contests in which parolee voters could sway outcomes are those that can have the most impact on one’s daily life and family, such as school board elections. Continuing to disenfranchise people after they have returned home also has ripple effects on suppressing civic engagement across the community (Burch 2014). Finally, twenty other states allow parolees to vote. California is behind, and it’s time to catch up.
Data limitations: Because the total number of parolees living in each county is not published by CDCR, we estimate the total number using a weighted average based on the number of parolees released to each county each year. Our analysis also assumes that all parolees would vote, and all would vote the same way in order to flip an election outcome. While this is not likely in the real world, we make this assumption in order to illustrate the point that parolee voters could potentially make a difference in local election outcomes if they are activated by Get-Out-The-Vote efforts. Lastly, we include election contests that are municipal or district-based, in which not all county residents are able to participate. Because data is not published on a parolee’s exact location, we can’t estimate specific district or city impact, we can only make generalizations about potential impact of parolee voters in the county. To address this, we have tried to select relatively larger local elections in which many people participate, as well as some at-large district-based elections.
Read more about this project, data sources and data limitations here
Authors: Laura Daly, Erica Orcutt, Sarah Byer
References:
Burch, Traci R. (2014) Effects of Imprisonment and Community Supervision on Neighborhood Political Participation in North Carolina. The Annals of the American Academy.