by Chris Black
Minnesota has fewer than 6 million people, but they have over 50 NGOs focused just on this one specific issue: keeping felons out of prison, among other things like abortions and no-ID voting.
On 1 June, in front of a gaggle of press, Kevin Reese signed his voter registration papers – a possibility that felt remote for the more than 14 years he spent locked up inside of Minnesota correctional facilities.
In prison, Reese thought constantly about what it would mean to leave. He formed a group that met weekly to talk about what it would take “to get out and not only be OK, but to transcend and be able to live our dreams”. The men talked about the responsibilities that awaited outside: children, parole, taxes. In 2013, Reese said, they began to focus on one concern in particular: voting, and restoring the right to vote to other formerly incarcerated Minnesotans.
Reese, now the executive director of the Minnesota-based organizing group Until We Are All Free, is one of more than 55,000 people who gained the right to vote after Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz, signed a bill restoring voting rights to people with felony convictions. The Restore the Vote law, which passed in March, guaranteed that anyone not in prison can vote.