Legislation in Olympia could give people in Washington prisons their voting rights.

House Bill 2030, known as the Free the Vote Act, would allow people to vote in elections - potentially granting that right to more than 14,000 people in the state's prisons.

Charles Longshore, a Skokomish tribal member, was convicted of second-degree murder in 2012 and is serving a 35-year sentence in a prison north of Olympia.

He said Black, indigenous and other people of color are disproportionately impacted by mass incarceration.

"We have been disenfranchised," said Longshore. "Our humanity has been taken, and primarily minority people are still continuing to be denied access to the polls."

Incarcerated people are allowed to vote in Maine, Vermont, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

Republicans have expressed opposition to the bill - as well as Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs' office, which said voting rights shouldn't be given to people "who have not yet paid their debt to society."

Anthony Blankenship - a leadership team member with Free the Vote WA - said if people behind bars were able to vote, they would feel more connected with their communities, which would also make them less likely to reoffend.

"Building that sense of civic engagement, civic learning, and care about your community," said Blankenship, "is what we're hoping to do with this bill."

Longshore said it's hard to feel like a citizen when he doesn't have the right to vote.

"Our goal is to rehabilitate people and bring them home and make them better men or women than they were when they came in," said Longshore. "You can't do that without restoring their right to vote and making them whole and making us feel included and a part of the state."



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Surrounded by states banning nearly all abortions, its legalization in New Mexico has made the state a top place to travel for the procedure and a new poll showed it could be a defining issue in the November election.

Results from a coalition of civil rights groups found women of color said politicians who want to earn their vote need to focus on reproductive justice plus the issues of affordable health care, gun violence prevention and racism.

Lupe M. Rodriguez, executive director of the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, said many women of color are energized to participate in the election.

"With Latinas and other women of color, we've seen their power as a voting bloc on this issue in recent elections," Rodriguez pointed out. "Voters of color -- and including Latinos -- are rejecting abortion bans and attacks on their freedom."

The poll found nearly nine in 10 women of color say voting in the 2024 election is extremely or very important. It was conducted by a coalition of civil rights groups called "Intersections of Our Lives."

The poll also found 93% of Black women, 84% of AAPI women and 79% of Latinas agree with the statement "racism has gone on too long," and policies to advance racial equity are long overdue.

Regina Davis Moss, president and CEO of In Our Own Voice: National Black Women's Reproductive Justice Agenda, said the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling overturning the decades-old constitutional right to abortion is still reverberating.

"One of the things that's so different from 20 years ago is, so many things are not different from 20 years ago," Davis Moss emphasized. "We should have made more progress. We should not be looking at taking away rights. And so, the more things change, the more they stay the same, and that is absolutely unacceptable to women of color."

Over a 15-month period ending in June 2023, the Guttmacher institute found the number of abortions in New Mexico increased by 220% with many patients coming from Texas, where it is mostly banned.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Carnegie Corporation of New York.

The Nevada state primary is coming up June 11 and one voting-rights group wants to make sure all Nevadans have the information they need to make their voices heard. They are looking for more people to help.

Silver State Voices is among the organizations behind the national, nonpartisan Election Protection program.

Noé Orosco, program manager for Silver State Voices, said the goal is to place trained, nonpartisan volunteers at polling locations throughout Nevada, who can help voters with a variety of questions from accessibility to voting requirements.

"I think it's super important, because at the end of the day, we are just trying to ensure that anyone who is able to vote is able to cast their ballot," Orosco explained.

Orosco noted the Election Protection program also has hotlines available in English, Spanish, Arabic and Asian languages. All are administered by a coalition of partners who can also provide useful information in a variety of languages.

Silver State Voices is recruiting more volunteers in Clark and Washoe counties, and Orosco stressed it is a great way to be civically engaged.

As the general election in November inches closer, various concerns and questions could come up at polling locations. Orosco said Silver State Voices and the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada strongly believe it's important to get volunteers trained and ready before sending them into the field.

"Because we wouldn't want you to think that now that you are a volunteer and someone is having a very legal question, that you try to resolve the issues for them because that is not what we are there for," Orosco pointed out. "We're just there to ensure that if there are any complications, we reroute folks to the hotline or maybe even to the elections workers at those polling locations."

He added as the June primary approaches, it will start to warm up in Nevada. Volunteers will be distributing snacks and water at polling locations with long wait lines -- of 30 minutes to an hour or more -- a courtesy which has been challenged in court in other states.

More than 50% of voting-age women in Nevada are people of color, and a new poll found they do not feel heard or seen by most policymakers.

The poll was commissioned by a cohort of civil rights groups, called "Intersection of Our Lives." It showed, despite feeling disenfranchised, women of color view voting as an important avenue to accomplish the changes they want to see.

Roshni Nedungadi, chief research officer and founding partner of HIT Strategies, helped conduct the poll. She said rising costs of health care, fair housing and the need to close the "pay gap" are all important issues to women of color. Another big issue is abortion care.

"We also found, very clearly, that AAPI, Black, and Latina women strongly support abortion care and they really do care about communities being able to find and afford abortion care," Nedungadi reported.

Nedungadi noted more than three in four women polled said more should be done to ensure people have adequate access to abortion care. And the poll found a solid majority of women of color, especially Black women, believe it is important for the government to take action to address high rates of maternal death.

Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners, called the poll data "game changing" and said it is inexcusable many elected officials around the country do not know what matters to women of color. She is convinced the poll results will help them. But Lake pointed out one thing she noticed in interpreting the data is the high level of pessimism being felt by women.

"One of the things that's so different from 20 years ago is so many things are not different from 20 years ago," Lake observed. "We need to hurry history here. We should've made more progress. We should not be looking at taking away rights."

Lake added while cost of living, reproductive rights and race and gender-based discrimination are all issues that will heavily influence the way women vote in November, another huge voting priority is addressing gun violence. She contended politicians cannot ignore women of color as voters if they want to win the election.

Support for this reporting was provided by The Carnegie Corporation of New York.


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