Election Views From Behind Bars in Ohio: Divided Just Like the Rest of U.S.

In more than a quarter century behind bars, Michael Conley unlearned the apathy about voting he carried into an Ohio prison when he was sentenced in his early 20s.

“I never had the motivation to vote because I was raised in an environment where the majority of people believed that their voice doesn’t matter,” Conley said in a 2024 Marshall Project survey of more than 54,000 people incarcerated in prisons and jails across the country. “However, after my incarceration, coupled with increased education, I have realized that my previous beliefs were grossly inaccurate and everyone’s voice matters.”

At the Marion Correctional Institution where Conley, 50, is up for parole in 2059, he has pushed his warden for a quiet space where incarcerated adults can study for college. He’s engaged with nonprofit advocates for restorative justice. But talking politics, he said, is tough when ideas for achieving common goals — a secure border, policing that keeps communities safe, jobs — are demonized and disparaged by bias from the media and the candidates.

In a presidential election punctuated by a major-party candidate with 34 felony convictions, The Marshall Project wanted to know what people in prison and jail thought about an election Democrats and some media cast as a contest between “a prosecutor and a convicted felon.” We also wanted to know if they would send former President Donald Trump, a Republican, to prison. (Most wouldn’t.)

The survey follows our first-of-its-kind political survey in 2020 that challenged a commonly-held notion — that people behind bars would overwhelmingly support Democrats. (They still don’t.)

The 2024 survey included people in 785 prisons and jails in 45 states and the District of Columbia. In Ohio, more than 2,900 people in 31 prisons and 20 jails answered questions about their political preferences and shared thoughts on the presidential candidates.

Incarcerated people are rarely asked for their political opinions. Roughly 18,000 people regain the right to vote when released from Ohio prisons each year. While inside, many said they lacked access to news sources, making them less likely to know which candidate they preferred.

It’s hard to compare the views of people in Ohio’s prisons and jails with others in the state because men and Black people are incarcerated at disproportionately higher rates.

The race and gender of Ohio’s prison population, which the state reports daily, show that Black people were significantly underrepresented in the survey, and women were overrepresented.

Because we know the people who answered the survey don’t represent all incarcerated Ohioans, we looked for trends across race, gender, party affiliation and other categories. We’re sharing as many individual voices and opinions as possible. For more specific comparisons with the general electorate, we used the Times/Siena poll of likely Ohio voters from September to compare to our survey results of incarcerated people. The Marshall Project found:

• Respondents incarcerated in Ohio picked Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor, 50% to 31%, compared to 46% to 33% at prisons and jails in other states.
  
• Incarcerated Black people in Ohio picked Harris over Trump 50% to 29% compared to 79% to 16% for likely Black voters in the state’s general electorate.
  
• When Harris replaced President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket, she won over some Trump supporters and people who previously said they wouldn’t vote. The dwindling support for Trump and swing toward the new Democratic nominee were more dramatic in Ohio.
  
• A majority of incarcerated people who identified as Democrats and Independents said America is ready for a female president. Republicans more often said the country is not ready.
  

Some were hopeful that Trump’s experience with the legal system would make him more sympathetic to people behind bars.

“I believe [he’d be able] to change how the federal government and states keep individuals locked up behind bars for so long without a chance at true reform,” said a man of mixed race at the Marion Correctional Institution. He said he doesn’t believe the government cares about his mental well-being or providing enough educational and occupational opportunities to meaningfully rehabilitate incarcerated people.

Even those who disliked Trump cited their feelings about prison being harmful as a reason to oppose his incarceration.

“I don't wish incarceration on anyone,” said a man who lamented the time he’s lost with his daughter while serving time in the Summit County Jail.

Respondents who said Trump should be incarcerated cited basic fairness.

“The law is the law, right,” a Black man, who identified as a Republican but also said he would vote for Harris, said from the Cuyahoga County Jail. “If he were a man of color, black or brown, the question would not be asked, he'd be in jail the day the jury came back with the conviction, and yet the political triangle allows the convicted felon to run in a presidential race.”

Some found inspiration, even hope, in the duality of Trump’s political and felony convictions.

“Sounds good, like, Trump showing the world that being convicted and labeled a felon should not hold you back from doing something great … to not let your past hinder you from having a bright future,” said a man in the Cuyahoga County Jail who supports Trump.

Harris’ impact on the race

Our first survey of 2024 showed 17% of respondents nationally and 12% in Ohio supported Biden.

Our second survey after the president exited the race found that, like the general electorate, people behind bars responded more favorably to Harris than Biden.

At rates nearly identical to national surveys of the general electorate, 77% of incarcerated people in Ohio who identified as Democrats, 53% of Independents and 34% of Republicans said the country is ready for its first female president.

Incarcerated respondents, especially Black people, enthusiastically responded to Harris taking the top of the ticket. Support for Trump over Biden shrunk 25 points among Ohio participants after Harris became the nominee. Black Ohio respondents favored Trump over Biden by nearly 24 points in the first survey and Harris over Tump by about 20 points in the next.

For many survey respondents, though, Harris’ record on crime as a former district attorney in San Francisco loomed large. The more familiar respondents were with Harris’ record as a prosecutor, the less favorably they viewed her.

Harris has styled herself a “progressive prosecutor,” pointing to her adoption of programs that steered some people away from prison. The Trump campaign has cast the vice president as “too soft” on crime. Legal analysts have argued Harris’ record is mixed at best, noting how difficult it is to define what makes a prosecutor progressive.

“She put a lot of men and women behind bars for a long period of time that didn't fit the punishment of the crime,” wrote a man who was in the Mahoning County Justice Center.

“I truly disagree with many of her views concerning crime and punishment,” said a Black respondent from North Central Correctional Complex who still prefers Harris to Trump based on policy. “Like most prosecutors, she believes in the harshest punishment for felons. I have experienced this side of the law and I know how corrupt and foul the judicial process in America is today.”

Those who did find Harris to be too lenient pointed to her prosecutorial record, which they described as being soft on crime”. “She and her ilk ruined California and now they want to do the same to the rest of America,” said one Ross County Correctional respondent, who is Latino and Republican.

Crime, a ‘felon,’ and a ‘prosecutor’

Attacking an opponent’s record on crime is a campaign staple. Republicans are advocating for policies that remove rights from people with felony convictions, even though their own candidate has a record. Democrats have adopted language such as “felon” that denigrates people with a criminal record, despite having a base that is disproportionately affected by the legal system.

The Harris campaign cast the election as “felon” versus “prosecutor” in a video ad that aired during the Democratic National Convention in September. On the campaign trail Harris boasted that she has taken on “perpetrators of all kinds,” and knows “Donald Trump’s type.”

Democrats have focused on Trump’s felony convictions in their campaign. The former president is far from typical of those ensnared in the criminal legal system. But the Harris campaign has weaponized the stigma of the label “felon” to suggest it’s the reason why he is unfit to hold public office.

In Ohio, while some respondents called the framing factual, others viewed it as political theater or were disappointed at the stigma it perpetuated for people with felony records.

“It shows exactly how the media thinks of most Black people with felonies,” responded one man who said he was a veteran serving time at Lebanon Correctional and supports Trump as a candidate. “It will always be the binary approach of good vs. evil. As a felon, it is very triggering.”

“It's actually insulting for the country to view him negatively solely based on the conviction," said a respondent from Geauga County incarcerated at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville. “What he did was wrong, but the real problem is that he's a horrible person.”

“History will be made either way,” said Anthony Holley, a Black man sentenced in Hamilton County and incarcerated at Pickaway Correctional Institution who identifies as an Independent. “Either we will have the first female President or the first convicted felon President.”

This article was first published by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletters, and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.

This article appears in Oct 9-22, 2024.