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Volunteers register county jail inmates to vote
The 2-hour drive signed up 456 voters and took in 700 absentee ballot requests. Joni Rabinowitz, a volunteer with Just Harvest, began fielding questions from the red uniformed men she later described as "extremely interested and very eager to participate." She was there with about 45 others from groups including the Pennsylvania League of Young Voters.
The 2-hour drive signed up 456 voters and took in 700 absentee ballot requests.
The inmates on 6D crowded around plastic tables, chatting, smiling and milling about, while one volunteer at each table handed out forms and answered a flurry of questions.
Joni Rabinowitz, a volunteer with Just Harvest, began fielding questions from the red uniformed men she later described as "extremely interested and very eager to participate."
She was there with about 45 others from groups including the Pennsylvania League of Young Voters; Goodwill of Southwestern Pennsylvania; the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, ACORN; the Community Voters Project; Work for Progress; and Duquesne University nursing and political science students.
Volunteers explained: You can vote if you've been charged with a felony but haven't had your court date yet. You can vote if you're incarcerated on a misdemeanor conviction. You can vote if you've completed your incarceration on felony counts and are in jail awaiting trial on other charges.
Inmates who had already registered at home could fill out absentee voting cards, along with the rest of the jail voters who would all be voting absentee on Election Day.
Spearheaded by inmate program director Jack Pishke, it was the largest registration effort to date at the jail and the only one jail officials knew of statewide, in anticipation of the last registration day: Oct. 6.
In a dizzying two hours, the group helped to complete 456 new registrations and about 700 absentee ballot applications.
Unlike most of the younger volunteers, Ms. Rabinowitz, 67, of Park Place, had been in jail before. She was locked up with a group of organizers for two separate stretches in 1963, after the group was arrested for registering rural black voters in the south with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
Those voters, she said, were scared because "they'd never had the right to vote before and we couldn't tell them it wasn't dangerous."
The jail inmates today were just eager. And hopeful.
One young man shouted that he didn't care which party he registered with, he wanted to cast a vote for Sen. Barack Obama.
Several others echoed his sentiment. Correctional Officer George Istik announced with a smile, "I'm still voting for [Sen. John] McCain."
Image Caption: From left, Charlotte Lee, 52, of Homewood, Devan Posten, 39, of Wilkinsburg, Melee Shorter, 31, of Bellevue, and Olivia Zubik, 20, of Bethel Park, fill out voter registration forms with help from Cindy Walter, a faculty member of the School of Nursing at Duquesne University. Volunteers from many community groups conducted the voter registration drive at Allegheny County Jail.
