Sheriff: 300 Inmate Voters Need Campaign Materials 
By Todd Swindell and Michael Petrelis

Without question, this email from Nicholas Gregoratos of the San Francisco Sheriff's Department's division of legal services for prisoners, is the most fascinating one to hit our campaign in-box since we qualified for the ballot:

"Every election the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department registers and facilitates vote-by-mail voting for all eligible voters in our county jails. [...] If your campaign would like to reach out to these voters with campaign materials you will need to deliver the materials to our office no later than the close of business Tuesday October 14, 2014.

"Please note that we are unsure of the exact number of inmate voters at this time, and cannot tell you which voters are registered in which supervisorial or assembly district. For this reason we recommend that you deliver enough campaign materials for at least 300 voters."

The #VotePetrelis team will deliver hundreds of our campaign business cards to the sheriff for the inmates who are eligible to vote, and we hope a robust number of them are District 8 voters and will make Petrelis their number choice on their ballots.

You may recall that in August, we noted felons have the right to vote in California (http://tinyurl.com/Petrelis-felons-voting-rights), once they are no longer incarcerated and have completed parole. Former felons on probation are allowed to cast ballots in elections.

We laud the sheriff for this voter registration program for inmates and for the outreach to our DIY Democracy campaign.

Former Felons Can Vote in District 8 Race
 

(Article by Todd Swindell and Michael Petrelis, cross-posted from our Facebook campaign site.)

A friend of ours who served time in a federal penitentiary for a felony conviction and lives in District 8, recently said he would vote for Michael this fall if he had voting rights.

Like him, we assumed California felons were stripped of this right and we asked around for facts about restoring the vote for former prisoners. Here's what one observer of the criminal justice system told us:

"I think your friend’s information is wrong about his voting rights. Felons in California may vote as long as they are not currently in custody for a felony conviction or actively on felony parole. If anything, we need a campaign around educating felons about the rights they don’t realize they have."

We investigated further and found this information at the NonProfitVote.org site for California"

"Individuals convicted of a felony are ineligible to vote while incarcerated and on parole. Voting rights are automatically restored upon completion of parole, and people on probation can vote. Ex-offenders should re-register to vote." (Source: http://tinyurl.com/jwd2nop)

Digging down for details about former inmates voting by mail, the California Secretary of State's site (http://tinyurl.com/55fwbh) mentions that this option is available for them as with all eligible voters and the secretary links to this online method of registering to vote: http://registertovote.ca.gov/.

Let's all spread the word that felons out of custody and off parole can vote, and also encourage everyone to register to vote in the fall election.