Chicago City Wire

A pro-SAFE-T Act group is seeking votes for pro-SAFE-T Act politicians on Nov. 8 in an unlikely, if logical, place: the Cook County Jail.

The Chicago Votes Action Fund, backed by George Soros, the Ford Foundation and MacArthur Foundation, is actively registering voters at the largest jail in Illinois.

The group said it registered 94 new voters on Sun. Oct. 9.

The group hosts monthly Zoom trainings for volunteers who want to go to the jail to register voters. The next training is on Nov. 4.

In Illinois, convicted felons in prison are not allowed to vote until completion of their sentence. But accused criminals awaiting trial in jail can.

Chicago Votes has been a vociferous supporter of allowing felons to vote-- decrying what it calls "felony disenfranchisement"-- as well as the SAFE-T Act, which prosecutors say will result in approximately half of the state's current jail detainees being released on Jan. 1, 2023.

"Felony disenfranchisement is rooted in racism and white supremacy," said Avalon Betts-Gaston of the Illinois Alliance for Reentry & Justice, which supports Chicago Votes. 

Betts-Gaston says "our brothers and sisters on the inside" need political representation as much as law-abiding citizens.

"I can personally tell you as a woman who served time in federal prison, there is not one day that I was in prison that I was not a victim of or a witness to sexual assault," she said.

Betts-Gaston, of Naperville, was part of a mortgage fraud scheme that federal prosecutors say "bilked lenders and vulnerable homeowners out of more than $725,000."

The SAFE-T Act bill, supported by Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, is being called "Pritzker's Purge Law" by critics, including Democrat Will County State's Attorney James Glasgow, who says it will lead to the "end of days" in Illinois.

According to a report by Block Club Chicago, 25 percent of the inmates at the Cook County jail-- 1,384 people-- voted in the June 28, 2022 primary election. That's about 25 percent of the average daily June jail population of 5,560.

Cook County Jail is located in the city's 24th Ward, represented by Ald. Monique Scott.