These Chicago Activists Helped Launch the First In-Jail Polling Location in the U.S.

By Emma Sarran Webster


On August 21, Illinois Governor Jay Pritzker signed two expenses into law that will vastly expand voting rights for inmates in the state’s prisons. SB 2090 requires county jails to let detainees awaiting trial to cast ballots throughout elections, and to allocate those detainees with voter registration forms and voting rights intelligence, while HB 2541 (or Re-Entering Citizens Civic Education Act) provides people being discharged from jail with peer-taught civics classes.


For 31-year-old Jen Dean, the Co-Deputy Director of Chicago Votes and a recipient of the 2019 MTV Leaders for Change grant, the Governor’s actions were a key step toward expanding voter access in Illinois. “It turned Cook County Jail into the opening [jail] polling location in the country,” she tells MTV News.


Dean and her colleagues helped write both expenses, yet they believe their work is far from over. Their agency is really interested in voter registration, education, and engagement — and working to improve the incarcerated vote is only piece of the picture. The team also focuses heavily on youth voting, and also training the city’s youth to organize alongside them.


“We’ve run a couple of leadership development programs [and] graduated over 200 young people to go and work in different nonprofits, campaigns, and other companies around the city of Chicago,” 30-year-old Stevie Valles, Executive Director of Chicago Votes as well as a recipient of the 2019 MTV Leaders for Change grant, tells MTV News. “We’ve also helped pass a few different bills — including online voter registration, same-day voter registration and automatic voter registration — and we’ve run several campaigns and initiatives to get more youth mobile in the city of Chicago in terms of politics.”


So how do they do it all? MTV News chatted with both Dean and Valles to learn how they achieve their objectives, what they do any time activism gets overwhelming, and why they make working in politics fun.


MTV News: Chicago Votes has been working on and achieving some big objectives. How does the agency work on a daily basis to do so? 


Stevie Valles: Every single day is different depending on what's the most urgent. We run a program in the Cook County jail, we work in legislative bodies, we do advocacy work with administrators, we sit on 11 different coalitions, and we still do voter registration and other events to get the word out. We're just young, and we're scrappy, and we're all over the place talking to as several people as we can and attempting to get them involved in the work that we're doing, while also attempting to lend a helping hand in the work that they're doing so we can make Chicago a higher end place to live.


MTV News: moreover to writing laws that expand voter rights, you work to register inmates at Cook County jail. Tell us about that. 


Jen Dean: We run a program called Unlock Civics. On the grassroots side, we are entering jails and prisons to make sure people have access to the ballot along with access to correct voter data. One of the greatest [misconceptions] we hear is, “I have a felony; I can't vote,” which isn't true. As soon as you are released in the state of Illinois, your voting rights are restored. Nevertheless you should re-register.


there really are a lot of loopholes people are not aware of; we attempt to prepare ensure people know the truth about voting and why they have the firm to prepare change in their communities. So, making sure that people know: in the event you care about this offer, here's how you could change it through politics, or here's how you reach out to your alderman; here's how you hold a judge — who either gave you a second chance or sentenced you harshly — accountable. There really are a lot of ways that can give people hope for the scenario they’re in, and I think this program certainly permits people to feel that.


MTV News: A lot of people may assume writing legislation only happens in Congress. How does a business like yours enter that conversation? 


Dean: I wish I had known 10 years back that I had the ability to write laws. Think you have got to go to law school. Don't. You could literally sit down and mention, “I want something to be this way,” assuming it's ethically correct and not a crazy financial range. So for us, me, [attorney] Michelle Mbekeani, and Stevie Valles sat down on MLK day, and we really just wrote [SB2090, the voting in jails bill] on a computer. Once it's written, you just find a lawmaker who will carry it for you. I went through Googled almost every voting-in-jail bill that has ever been proposed.


MTV News: What are the largest misconceptions you encounter once it comes to voting rights?


Dean: I routinely assumed that people in power and our government were passionate about voting rights and civics. However what I've realized that there really is more effort being put to oppress people's right to vote than there really are people in government on your side. So the fact that I've Been fighting for this work for two years right now is sad — you shouldn't have fight to create ensure that somebody’s constitutional right to vote is upheld. That should be a community effort that we're all on board with, especially people who work in government because we're the ones who are paying for those positions to be in government. We're paying those tax dollars for that state rep to be in that position, for that person to be at the Board of Elections, for that clerk to be in office. And any time there's pushback against expenditures — especially civil rights expenses — it's very disheartening and shocking. You hear about all of the stuff that went down in the ‘60s with voting rights and why excellent that was that people were fighting for it. Yet we're still fighting those same fights.


MTV News: You do so much work to prepare large-scale change, yet does it ever get overwhelming looking at all the changes you hope to make?  


Dean: Yes, it is exceedingly overwhelming. As an example, [with the] voting in jail bill, you think about the fact that 30,000 people each year are released out of prison, and that most of these people don't know that their voting rights exist. And then you have another 4 million people with a criminal conviction on their record who mostly don't know that they have the correct to vote. You have 20,000 people who are detained in pre-trial detention. And that bill, SB 2090, affects all of these people. So whenever it's the night before a vote in committee or it's the night before it hits the floor, I sit there at residence and I'm like, ‘Oh my God, I need to be doing everything possible now to pass this bill,’ because it feels like [all these people are] relying on me.


Although as soon as you break it down and you also stick to your to-do lists, it's not as overwhelming. Yet this work is a lot of pressure. There really are so several people relying on you, which is why I think a lot of activists and organizers deal with mental health issues. We're also super empathetic people, so as soon as feedback comes in, we really do take it to heart. That’s why I think it's key to build programs like Rest for Radicals — it's really supposed to create us sit down as a team and think about, ‘How do we take care of ourselves as a community?’ A lot of it is relying on each other, as well as making sure that the work stays fun.


MTV News: What are you most delighted of once it comes to your work? 


Valles: The best piece of it for me is recognizing that you are actually changing the world. We are making things, ideas, law. People's lives are going to be better — and that's an enormous payoff for all of this. We do still get overwhelmed from time to time, yet at least it's not hard work that doesn’t truly pay off.


I've worked In America Senate; I've worked in the Texas legislature; I've worked on a lot of political campaigns. And the difference[s] between those places and here are that we like each other, we treat each other with respect, we have fun while we're doing this work, and we're still winning. You don't have to have the hierarchy, you don't have to have a toxic culture, you don’t have to be in boring places where you need to wear a suit each day. I have on Daisy Dukes, a polo, and tennis shoes; and I biked to work today. However we're still changing laws and we're still impactful.


MTV News: in the event you can tell readers one step to take to help the cause of voting rights, what would it be? 


Dean: For us, a lot of our calls to action — which can be asking people to call their senators, asking people to file a petition, [or] fill out witness lists — are directly through our social media. Do some statistics and find out what corporations are out there similar to ours. We are all over the nation. Groups habitually need volunteers, along with a lot of their asks are through social media, so really making use of that … to take political action.


Valles: And just put yourself out there a little. Converse with the people about issues; Google and also you could learn a little more. You could habitually do the bare minimum, and the bare minimum is taking the time to learn more about the issue.


MTV News: And what suggestions do you have for people who aspire to get involved in activism as a full-time career?


Dean: I would propose you begin exceedingly small and to volunteer at a company that’s doing similar work that you like to do. Generally, you don't have to reinvent the wheel — somebody’s likely already doing the work — so you have got to find people who are at the same level of passion that are, and you also find those people by showing up to events.


And then for those who are really interested in beginning a nonprofit, I would rather encourage them to take an agency class at a local community college or online. You absolutely have to know how to keep track of a financial range, how to write plans, and what your employee labor laws are like. Those are all things that the IRS comes down on people and shuts down corporations [for]. So if you're ahead of the game as far as your operations go, the sky is the quota for success.


This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.


Leaders for Change is a MTV grant program that invests in young people doing extraordinary work at the local level to advance voting access. From getting polling places on college campuses across Michigan to registering voters in Chicago jails to allocating rides to the polls in Georgia, these young leaders are breaking down the barriers that make it hard to vote in their communities.