Judge dismisses ACLU voting rights case

DELAWARE – A U.S. district court made a decision Friday that will impact the voting rights of prisoners in the state of Delaware after the ACLU of Delaware and other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Prisoners Legal Advocacy Network.

“The goal is to make sure that as many of these voters as possible have their voices heard in this upcoming, really important election,” said Andrew Bernstein, Cozen Voting Rights Fellow at the ACLU of Delaware.

In 2022, the Delaware Supreme Court struck down the universal mail-in voting law, adopting what Bernstein called a strict interpretation of who can cast an absentee ballot. That definition did not explicitly include incarcerated voters. “For the 2024 election, we had no idea what they were going to do, so we filed for an injunction to give those voters in-person access to the ballot.”

On Friday, a U.S. district court judge denied the injunction and dismissed the lawsuit.

For voting rights activists, however, it was not a total loss. Bernstein said, “During the course of litigation, we obtained a non-prosecution agreement from the state that states that any voter attempting to vote by mail in the upcoming 2024 election will be allowed to do so.”

They received an agreement not to prosecute the defendants and a court order protecting the right to vote for criminals and prisoners.

Bernstein says the ACLU of Delaware is not done yet – and there is already a precedent for what it wants to achieve: “After participating in this election, polling places in prisons are becoming more common across the United States and are achieving great results in terms of participation and increasing civic engagement.”

Bernstein said it is difficult to determine the exact number of voters detained in Delaware because the number fluctuates constantly, but throughout the legal process the number of people in custody has remained consistently above a thousand.

In a statement to WMDT, the Delaware Department of Corrections said, in part: “The Delaware Department of Correction remains committed to protecting the right of eligible voters in the custody of the DOC to exercise their constitutional right to participate in the electoral process.”