Lackawanna County Prison and election bureau officials say they’re working to resolve an issue that could prevent inmates who are legally eligible to vote from casting mail-in ballots in the May primary election.
Under the prison’s current mail policy, inmates would not be able to receive paper copies of mail-in ballots because all incoming mail at the prison, with the exception of legal documents, is sent to an outside company that scans the original. The company then transmits a digital copy that inmates access through prison-supplied computer tablets, Warden Tim Betti said.
Under Pennsylvania law, inmates convicted of misdemeanor charges and those imprisoned while awaiting adjudication of their cases are eligible to vote while incarcerated.
The mail-in ballot issue came to the forefront Wednesday after Beverly Debarros, a prison volunteer who has worked to register inmates to vote, raised the matter at the county prison board meeting.
Pennsylvania is among at least 14 states that allow state prisons and county-level prisons and jails to scan mail and provide inmates a printed or electronic version of the original, according to a 2022 report by the Prison Policy Initiative, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit group that researches mass incarceration. The practice is designed to reduce the amount of contraband entering prisons.