Virginia’s decision to restore voting rights is an important moment. But here in Michigan, we must confront a larger question: What does democracy mean when so many people still fall through the cracks?

By Angela Davenport | Executive Director, Voting Access For All Coalition (VAAC)

Last week, Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment that will automatically restore voting rights to people with felony convictions upon their release from incarceration. The amendment also establishes a fundamental right to vote for people who meet the state’s voting qualifications.

As we reported last week, the decision changes a longstanding system of felony disenfranchisement with deep roots in Virginia’s history of racial discrimination. The amendment will take effect January 1, 2027.

But Virginia’s decision raises questions that extend far beyond one state.

Who gets to participate, who gets left out, and how long are we willing to accept systems that prevent people from having a voice in the decisions that shape their lives?

These questions are especially important here in Michigan, where we have made significant progress in protecting voting rights but still have considerable work to do at the intersection of criminal legal system reform and democracy.

The Right to Vote Does Not Always Mean Access to the Ballot

Michigan already restores voting rights automatically when someone is released from jail or prison. People on probation, parole, or awaiting arraignment, trial, or sentencing, including eligible people being held in jail, can also vote.

But there is an enormous difference between having a right and being able to exercise it.

At Voting Access For All Coalition, we see that difference every day.

We see it when someone sitting in a county jail, awaiting trial, has no idea they are still eligible to vote.

We see it when someone returning home from incarceration believes their conviction means they have permanently lost their voice in our democracy.

We see it when someone experiencing homelessness wants to participate in an election but does not know they can register without a traditional residential address.

And we see it when someone living in a treatment facility or transitional housing program is navigating transportation challenges, limited access to information, disabilities, and other barriers that make voting difficult.

These individuals have not simply fallen through the cracks. Too often, the systems responsible for supporting their participation have failed to reach them.

That is a distinction we cannot afford to ignore.

What We Witnessed This Election Should Change the Conversation

In the weeks leading up to Michigan’s November election, VAAC and our partners spent long days meeting people where they were.

We went into shelters, transitional housing facilities, drug and alcohol treatment programs, and the Genesee County Jail. We provided nonpartisan voter education, answered questions about eligibility, explained what was on the ballot, helped people navigate voting procedures, and coordinated transportation to polling locations.

We ultimately provided rides to more than 170 people, many of whom were voting for the first time.

Some were navigating housing instability. Others were dealing with physical or learning disabilities. Some had experienced incarceration, while others were working to overcome circumstances that made participating in an election seem almost impossible.

What stays with me most is not simply the number of people we reached.

It is the conversations.

The questions people asked. The uncertainty about whether they were eligible. The relief when they learned they had options. The care people took in trying to understand the candidates, the offices, and the issues that would shape their communities.

And the hope.

Despite the hardships so many were navigating, people still wanted to participate. They wanted to understand what was happening. They wanted their voices to count.

For some, voting was something they had never done before. For others, it was an opportunity to reconnect with a process they had long believed was closed to them.

Those experiences renewed my faith in people. But they also left me asking how many more people wanted to vote and never received the information, assistance, or access they needed.

How many eligible voters remain in county jails without meaningful access to registration or absentee ballots? How many people returning home from incarceration still believe they are permanently disenfranchised? How many people in shelters and treatment facilities never encounter anyone who can explain their rights?

We should not have to depend on a small team of advocates and volunteers working around the clock to help people exercise rights they already possess.

That responsibility must extend to the institutions, agencies, and systems that serve our communities.

Criminal Legal System Reform Is a Democracy Issue

For too long, conversations about criminal legal system reform and democracy have been treated as though they are separate.

We discuss incarceration, sentencing, reentry, and conditions inside our jails and prisons in one space. Then we discuss elections, voting rights, representation, and civic engagement in another.

But these issues are deeply connected.

The consequences of incarceration can follow people into nearly every aspect of their lives. Barriers to housing, employment, transportation, identification, and access to information can also become barriers to political participation.

When entire communities experience high rates of incarceration and repeated exclusion from public decision-making, the consequences extend well beyond any one individual.

How can people meaningfully influence the policies that shape their lives if they are repeatedly excluded from the processes where those decisions are made?

And how do we make sure people most directly impacted by our criminal legal system have a meaningful role in shaping the reforms intended to address it?

Criminal legal system reform must be part of our broader understanding of democracy because the way we administer justice has direct consequences for political participation, representation, and community power.

Michigan Has an Opportunity to Build on the Rights We Already Recognize

Virginia’s amendment addresses a legal barrier that Michigan has already removed for people returning home from incarceration.

That progress matters. But Michigan’s work is far from finished.

As we look toward 2027 and engage a new group of state lawmakers, we have an opportunity to examine whether our democratic systems are actually reaching the people they are intended to serve.

That includes establishing more consistent voting access procedures across Michigan’s county jails so eligible detainees can receive information, register, request ballots, and vote.

It includes providing civic education as part of the reentry process so people returning home understand their rights and how to participate.

It includes examining prison gerrymandering and what it means when incarcerated people are counted for political representation in communities where they are confined rather than in the communities they call home.

And it includes addressing the barriers experienced by people navigating housing instability, disabilities, treatment, recovery, and other circumstances that can make access to elections difficult.

But this work cannot end with legislation.

It requires coordination among election officials, jail administrators, state agencies, housing providers, treatment programs, community organizations, and, most importantly, people directly impacted by these systems.

We need to ask not only whether the law allows someone to vote, but whether the systems we have built make that participation possible.

And we need to hold ourselves accountable for the answers.

We Cannot Build a More Inclusive Democracy While Leaving People Out of It

Virginia’s decision reflects years of advocacy and organizing to change how voting rights are restored. It also opens a broader conversation about incarceration, political participation, and citizenship.

As organizations working across criminal legal reform, voting rights, housing, reentry, disability rights, and community organizing, we may have different priorities and approaches. But there are important places where our work intersects.

We do not have to agree on every issue to recognize that people should have meaningful opportunities to participate in decisions affecting their lives.

That means bringing these conversations directly to lawmakers and demanding serious attention to the relationship between our criminal legal system and democratic access.

It means listening to people who have navigated incarceration, homelessness, and the challenges of reentry.

It means investing in civic education and community leadership beyond election cycles.

And it means recognizing that the work of strengthening democracy does not stop once the polls close.

At VAAC, we are carrying the experiences of this election into the work ahead.

We are carrying the conversations we had inside jails and shelters, the questions from first-time voters, the gratitude people expressed when someone took the time to help them, and the many people we know we have not yet reached.

Those experiences should inform how we think about policy, how we organize our communities, and what we expect from our elected officials.

Virginia’s decision is an important development in voting rights restoration. Michigan’s opportunity is to build on the rights we already recognize and confront the systems that still prevent people from exercising them.

We cannot measure the strength of our democracy only by how many people cast a ballot. We must also examine how many people wanted to participate but were never given a meaningful opportunity.

Because democracy cannot truly belong to the people if too many of those people are still being left behind.

Related Reading

A 124-Year-Old Voting Ban Designed to Silence Black Virginians Is Finally Gone | Mother Jones

Virginia Voters Approve Automatic Voting Rights Restoration After Incarceration | Voting Access For All Coalition, November 5, 2026

Voting Access For All Coalition (VAAC) is a nonpartisan statewide organization working to ensure that system-impacted communities and people navigating housing instability and other barriers have the knowledge, access, and opportunity to vote in every election and build leadership beyond the ballot.