credit – luke eastman

Check out this wonderful write-up by Mark Davis in Seven Days featuring Kassie Tibbot, recent VT Law School graduate and long-time assistant to writinginsideVT. The article, titled “Vermont is one of two U.S. states that let incarcerated citizens vote.” The other is Maine.

Kassie is quoted throughout the piece, including the opening paragraph:

Kassie Tibbott spent several weeks this fall visiting five Vermont state prisons with the goal of getting local inmates to vote. The recent Vermont Law School graduate was happy to help 44 prisoners register for the first time. She was even more elated to meet 39 inmates already on the voter rolls, who simply asked for help getting absentee ballots. Dozens of others didn’t need assistance because they already knew the ropes.

The article goes on to point out the central importance of community to those inside and looking to return home at some point. Voting is one of the few ways they can participate in ‘normal’ life during incarceration. It is also an imperative that is felt as a result of all those who can NOT vote.

“Some of them, because they saw that some of their fellow inmates couldn’t vote, they thought, I had better do it,” said Tibbott. “I heard quite a few times inmates say, ‘See, our voice does matter.'”

It is heartening that our democracy can permit citizens otherwise limited in their civic engagement to vote.