A coalition of voting rights organizations is ensuring that incarcerated and formerly incarcerated voters have access to the ballot box.Members of the Expand the Ballot, Expand the Vote Coalition will be posted outside of the local Baltimore City Detention Center on Election Day on Tuesday, ready to drive people to the polls.The group is collaborating with Black Voters Matter and Life After Release to ensure that everyone eligible to vote, including those directly impacted by the criminal justice system, is aware of their voting rights and their opportunities to exercise them.The coalition is also going to have vans posted on Emerson Avenue and Monroe Street on Tuesday to bring up to 25 people to the polls. Nicole Hanson-Mundell, who leads the statewide coalition, told Fishbowl that about 20 people who had previously not planned to vote have since committed to voting after speaking with members of the coalition. “We’ll be available to ride them to the polls on November 5, so we’ll be moving and shaking on November 5 in and around the Baltimore community,” Hanson-Mundell said.Launched in the summer of 2024, Expand the Ballot, Expand the Vote Coalition has reached voters through street canvassing and providing voter education, registration assistance, and transportation to polling stations. This effort involves not canvassing in residential neighborhoods, but at courthouses, where the group can reach out to individuals who face housing or phone instability.In this setting, genuine conversations with impact take place, and people who feel excluded by the political process can build trust with the people in the coalition empowering them with a pathway to the ballot box. Maryland law allows the following:Individuals with a felony conviction can vote upon release from prison, even if on parole or probation. Those in pre-trial confinement retain the right to vote. People in youth detention facilities or mental health institutions are also eligible to vote. Maryland citizens awaiting trial or sentencing can participate in voting.“This is not public information,” Alexiss Kurtz, Steering Committee Member of Expand the Ballot, Expand the Vote Coalition told Baltimore Fishbowl. “I don’t see this on billboards, and we are doing the job of the board of elections by providing a public education campaign and telling people and informing formerly incarcerated voters they do have the right to vote.”Kurtz said the coalition also goes into jails and other institutions to register eligible voters to help increase both turnout and an individual’s knowledge of their rights.Expand the Ballot, Expand the Vote Coalition is supported by 10 to 15 organizations that are either led by or supported by individuals with criminal records. The coalition is itself led by formerly incarcerated individuals in Maryland who have done a variety of work around issues like criminal record expungement and housing policy.Hanson-Mundell is co-author of Maryland’s Value My Vote Act of 2021. The act ensures formerly and currently incarcerated people are educated on upcoming elections and are given voter registration and absentee ballot forms. It also makes sure the Maryland Board of Elections works with the Division of Corrections to inform every citizen released from incarceration of their eligibility to register to vote, and to post signs in correctional facilities, parole and probation offices outlining the voting laws in Maryland.The coalition is not only doing this work in Baltimore City; they’re working all across Maryland, and recently have been invited to come into the Anne Arundel County Detention Center.“We were able to get over 45 people registered, absentee ballots collected, sent out, women and men,” Hanson-Mundell said. “I’m very particularly interested in women who are coming out of the prison system and helping them navigate resources. So, it was really important for me to be of service to the women on the inside.”