When the Massachusetts supreme court banned sentences of life without the possibility of parole against children in late 2013, the state was ahead of the curve—just five states had taken that step as of the start of that year. 

Today there are 28. In an unusually rapid sea change over the last decade, red and blue states alike have rushed to bar that punishment, which denies someone any possibility of ever leaving prison, for anyone under age 18. That includes GOP-run Ohio in 2021, and Democratic-run Minnesota and New Mexico last year. 

Will a similar surge now shield even more youths from being incarcerated for life with no hope of release?

Once again, Massachusetts is ahead of the curve: The state supreme court issued landmark rulings on Jan. 11 that expanded its earlier holding, and raised the minimum age for a life without parole sentence from 18 to 21. 

In a 4-3 vote, the majority ruled that youth aged 18 to 20 are never beyond redemption, and that they should receive the same consideration as minors due to their continuing mental development. “A sentence of life in prison without parole eligibility review for those up to age twenty-one—individuals with diminished culpability and a heightened capacity for change—is no less cruel or unusual than it is for those up to age eighteen,” Justice Scott Kafker wrote in a concurrence that drew a direct line between the court’s decision in 2013 and its new ruling. 

The decision doesn’t guarantee actual release to anyone. Rather, it grants people opportunities to appear in front of a parole board to showcase their growth—and only once they’ve spent 15 to 30 years in prison, depending on the case. State officials estimate that the ruling made roughly 200 people newly eligible for a parole hearing.

“Emerging adults… must be granted a ‘meaningful opportunity to obtain release based on demonstrated maturity and rehabilitation,’” Chief Justice Kimberly Budd wrote for the majority, quoting from a 2010 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that applied to children. The court was considering the cases of two people, Sheldon Mattis and Jason Robinson, who were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life without parole as 18- and 19-year olds. (All seven justices who took part in the decision were nominated to the court by Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican.)

Massachusetts is just the second jurisdiction to ensure that everyone incarcerated over a crime committed before age 21 has some opportunity for release. 

In 2021, Washington, D.C., adopted a “second look” reform that’s functionally equivalent: People convicted as young adults can ask for a review after serving 15 years in prison. (D.C. does not call this review “parole,” so people in this group can technically still be sentenced to life without parole, but they have a mechanism to petition for release.) 

In fact, D.C. applies that reform all the way to age 25, rather than 21, a narrower definition of who is a full adult in the eyes of the law.

The Massachusetts ruling also builds on other very recent gains for reformers pushing for a higher cutoff age than 18. 

Just over the last twelve months, Connecticut and Illinois both adopted laws to restrict LWOP up to age 21. In Michigan and Washington state, judges banned sentencing rules that mandate life without parole for people under 19 and 21, respectively. Each has important carve-outs: Illinois’ law does not apply to people convicted of predatory sexual offenses, nor does it apply retroactively; Connecticut’s law applies only to people convicted before 2005; in Michigan and Washington, judges still have discretion to impose the sentence as long as it’s not automatic. But each concretizes the same principle as Massachusetts’ ruling: that 18 is not the proper place to set a limit for who gets to be considered a young person deserving of special protections. 

“People who committed crimes at a very young age have the capacity to turn their lives around and become productive citizens,” said Alex Taubes, a Connecticut lawyer who represents people on parole and supports his state’s 2023 reform. 

Preston Shipp, who advocates for such reforms nationwide as policy counsel with the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, says his advocacy work gets easier when he can tell lawmakers that more and more states have acted against juvenile life without parole. “When one domino falls, it causes the next domino to fall,” Shipp said. “These are very important steps that we’re continuing to take on our journey to make sure that people who don’t have fully formed brains are not thrown away and told there’s no hope.”

Reform proponents in other states are already lining up to be next. California’s supreme court heard a similar case in early December; it could prohibit life without parole up to age 26. 

In Washington state, legislation that would end life without parole up to age 25 received its first hearing on Jan. 15, just days after the Massachusetts ruling. Chelsea Moore, an advocate with the ACLU of Washington, and co-founder of Look2Justice, an organization centered on the rights of incarcerated Washingtonians, is championing that bill. “It’s wonderful that we see this acknowledgement spreading across the U.S.,” she said. “It’s very helpful for us to be able to interact with folks in those states, and to point to those states.”

This momentum reflects the extraordinary changes since the “superpredators” panic of the 1990s, which fueled more life sentences for children. The notion that a young person who commits a crime is particularly dangerous and unredeemable has been debunked, replaced with a consensus that youth is redeeming, a sign that one really could change. But to translate that idea into law would seem to demand drawing a bright line—a legal age that separates youth and adulthood, at least for the purpose of deciding what counts as too young to be sentenced to die in prison. And with different visions of change competing, that task itself is making reformers confront the nuances of age and development, and ponder how to best restrict a sentence that many refer to as “death by incarceration” without leaving too many people behind. 

This sense of an emerging momentum is not just a political boost for reformers like Moore. In the Massachusetts ruling, it actually served as legal evidence.

To justify raising the age from 18 to 21, the state supreme court appealed to the “evolving standards of decency,” an approach to constitutional law that connects people’s rights to contemporary norms, and that’s long been used to expand protections on juvenile defendants. The majority talked about recent laws and rulings in other states—as well as reforms in other nations—to conclude that these standards are shifting. 

Among the reforms the court cites: D.C.’s 2021 law, and Illinois’ 2023 law. 

Bolts asked Lindsey Hammond, policy director of the Illinois-based organization Restore Justice, for her reaction about the Massachusetts court drawing on a law she championed hundreds of miles away. “I think it’s incredible to see this momentum continue to build,” she said. In turn, she hopes that this out-of-state ruling can help her persuade Illinois lawmakers to revisit last year’s law and make it retroactive. 

“It is so encouraging for legislators to know that other states are reaching that same decision that young people are different,” she explained.

Besides these “evolving standards,” the Massachusetts court grounded its ruling on research in neuroscience and psychology that shows that people’s brains continue to develop into their mid-20s. “Advancements in scientific research have confirmed what many know well through experience: the brains of emerging adults are not fully mature,” the majority wrote.

Stephanie Tabashneck, a psychologist and senior fellow at the Center for Law, Brain and Behavior at Harvard Medical School, offers an example: Young adults “can’t regulate their emotions” as well as older adults because their frontal lobes are not fully developed. Tabashneck is not surprised that such findings resonated with the court. She often gives presentations to judges and attorneys, showing them brain scans highlighting the marked differences between younger and older adults; just seeing those images has a powerful effect on her interlocutors, she said. 

Some public officials echoed the science in praising the Massachusetts ruling. “The practice of putting a person behind bars forever, without paying attention to decision-making ability based on age and the science of brain development, should end,” Kevin Hayden, the district attorney of Suffolk County (Boston), said in a statement. Hayden succeeded Rachael Rollins, a reform-minded DA who’d also backed the litigation against life without parole, as well as efforts to raise the age of youth justice from 18 to 21 in other contexts.

But here’s a rub: Much of this research has found that people’s brains continue developing for years beyond age 21, leaving a gap with where the Massachusetts justices landed. The majority recognizes this, writing that “we acknowledge that the scientific record in this case suggests that the unique attributes of youth may persist in young adults older than twenty-one.” 

And here, too, the majority invoked examples from other states to explain how it reached its decision—except this time, it did that to justify not going up higher, say to 25, rather than to support going beyond 18: “The contemporary standards of decency that govern our decision today do not suggest a societal consensus that those aged twenty-one and above should be treated differently from older adults.”

On this point, the dissenting justices harshly criticized the majority for having it both ways. “[E]ven if it could, science does not definitively place the line of brain maturation at twenty-one, but rather suggests that it extends into the mid-twenties,” wrote Justice David Lowy. He accused his colleagues of “manufactur[ing] a new category of individuals entitled to distinct constitutional treatment,” and usurping the prerogative of lawmakers by deciding what he argues ought to be a political question—what is youth for the purposes of punishment. 

“Perhaps nothing speaks louder to the flaws in the court’s holding,” Lowy wrote, “than the court having crafted a line that ends at age twenty-one, thereby engaging in legislative line-drawing inconsistent with the science upon which it relies.” 

If there’s no switch that flips in a person’s brain the day they turn 18, neither is there one the day they turn 21. For Lowy, the seeming arbitrariness of setting a line at one’s 21st birthday was a reason to not raise the age at all. But for some reformers, it’s a reason to think even bigger.

Moore, the Washington advocate, feels a twinge of concern that if politicians and judges settle on 21 as the new age for juvenile justice, it may make it trickier to push bills with a higher age cutoff—like her state’s proposed legislation, which goes to 25, closer to what scientific studies envisage. “Just like the age of 18 was socially constructed, I think the age of 21 is also socially constructed,” she said. “We’re hopeful that we will continue to move past these social constructions of what we see as mature, into what we really know in science.”

Still, Moore is confident that, no matter how a particular reform defines who counts as young enough, it’ll pave the way for still more change down the line. Since Washington state abolished life without parole for teenagers under 18 in 2018, “We have people running nonprofits, we have people doing anti-violence work,” she said. “It’s so impressive what folks have done.” She points to a study conducted last year by two University of Washington scholars that showed low recidivism among the incarcerated people whose petitions were granted. 

“We just know that that model can be replicated if we bump the age up to 25 for those folks serving life and long sentences,” she added. “Those folks can come home safely and our parole board can determine when it is safe to return to their homes: They’re already doing it, and so they would be able to do it for this other group of folks.”

James Zeigler, who leads the Second Look Project, a D.C.-based group that championed D.C.’s reform and has helped implement them, questions if an age cutoff is needed at all. “If you have to draw a line somewhere, identify when someone becomes a full blown adult for culpability purposes, [25] probably makes the most sense, and it makes more sense than 18 or 21, which are both ages after which people continue to grow and develop quite a bit,” Zeigler said.

But “developmental maturation process doesn’t end at 25 for anybody,” he pointed out. “While it may slow down as a kind of general rule, everybody continues to kind of grow, change, and mature… I have seen it in my work that plenty of people who commit crimes and make serious mistakes well into adulthood, past the age of 25, past the age of 30, can still grow and change in the way that we are talking about, that you hope for in people.”

Katy Naples-Mitchell, a special litigation advisor at Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Institute, also wonders how to draw a rigid line as to when one enters adulthood, when the characteristics that make humans capable of change don’t just disappear as one ages.

As the Massachusetts supreme court considered the Mattis and Robinson cases, Naples-Mitchell co-authored an amicus brief in support of ending life without parole for young adults in Massachusetts. The brief focused on the huge racial disparities in who’s serving life without parole in Massachusetts, finding that Black youth between ages 18 and 20 are sixteen times more likely to have received that sentence than white youth.

“People of color are facing more extreme charges for less serious conduct,” Naples-Mitchell told Bolts, explaining that Black people in particular are more likely to face a charge that triggers life without parole. Research by the American Psychological Association has found that people perceive Black youth as older than they are, making judges more prone to treating Black defendants as full adults than they are with white defendants.

Those disparities also apply across age groups, though. According to research conducted by the Sentencing Project, an organization that researches criminal justice, the majority of people serving life without parole in Massachusetts as of 2020 were Black and Latinx; those groups make up less than one-fourth of the state’s overall population. Studies nationwide show prosecutors and judges use harsher charges and sentences for people of color.

For Naples-Mitchell, the debate over young adults should be a gateway for a broader reckoning with how we dole out punishments. “This is an opportunity to reshape norms about life sentences more broadly, beyond the categorical approach in the brain science,” she said. She described the neuroscientific research as critically important to understanding the need for reform but also says “the brain science is a window for the public to access new empathy.”

“There are lots of ways to build on that,” she added, “whether it’s to build to another later-in-life bright line, or to think more holistically about sentences of life without parole, and whether that is something that public policy should promote.”

D.C. underwent just the trajectory that Naples-Mitchell envisions. It first provided an opportunity for release to anyone convicted as a minor. Then, in 2021, it extended that approach to offenses committed up to age 25. And then, the local government chose to expand its reform yet again by guaranteeing any incarcerated person a judicial review after a lengthy term in prison—no matter their age at the time of the offense. That ordinance was part of the omnibus package that was blocked by Congress and President Biden last year. 

State Senator Liz Miranda, a progressive politician from Boston, wants Massachusetts to take the same route. She is sponsoring legislation that would repeal life without parole sentences regardless of the age at which someone commits a crime. Under the bill, anyone incarcerated in Massachusetts would receive a parole hearing after 25 years of incarceration.  

At a hearing for her bill, Miranda talked about her brother, who was murdered in Boston, explaining why she opposes life without parole as a punishment for his alleged killer. “I believe life without parole is death by another name, and I do not believe in death sentences,” Miranda said.

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“I hope that this board recognizes I am not the same person I was 23 years ago,” he said during his hearing before the Connecticut Board of Pardons and Paroles last week. He recounted mentoring young people and encouraging them to stay in school to keep them out of prison.

But members of the board questioned what made Smalls’ case extraordinary. “Participating in programs, that’s something that you’re expected to do,” said Rufaro Page, one of the board members. “Our policy is clear that there has to be something exceptional that occurred.”

“Aside from your receiving a lengthy sentence, I don’t see anything that is exceptional here,” she added. The board denied Smalls’ commutation. 

Page was echoing the wording of a new policy, unveiled on July 26, that requires people applying for a commutation in Connecticut to now show “exceptional and compelling circumstances” that merit reducing their time behind bars.

This new commutations policy replaced an earlier one rolled out in 2021 to reduce the long prison sentences that had been handed out in the 1990s and 2000s. Under the leadership of Carleton Giles, a former police officer, the board used the policy to grant 106 commutations. Almost two-thirds of the people whose sentences were reduced were Black.

But Democratic Governor Ned Lamont in April bowed to Republican furor over the commutations and paused clemency, Bolts reported in April. He removed Giles as head of the board, replacing him with Jennifer Medina Zaccagnini. Zaccagnini then put a hold on all commutations and supervised the release of the new policy in late July.

The board’s Aug. 30 hearings—held without Giles or the other two board members who’d been responsible for issuing the 106 commutations—were the first under the new policy, offering a peek into how it might change commutation decisions in Connecticut.

The three applicants heard on that day all fit the general bill of those who received commutations under the last policy. They were all Black or Hispanic, each serving decades in prison for a murder they committed when they were in their teens or early 20s, and all of them had been imprisoned for at least two decades. 

One of the applications was granted, and two were denied. Before the board was overhauled, between January and April of this year, it granted 87 percent of commutations applications once they made it to the hearings stage. 

Miriam Gohara, a professor at Yale Law School who has represented people applying for commutations, says it will take time to gauge how the revamped board will approach applications. “I think we need to give the board a chance to see what they’re going to do,” she told Bolts.

Still, the tone of these first hearings under the new policy was distinctly different from those held under Giles’ leadership, which focused more on how applicants changed in prison and on their conduct while incarcerated. Previously, board members had asked applicants about educational opportunities they’d taken advantage of, or how they’d use what they learned behind bars once they were free. Applicants’ experiences while incarcerated, by contrast, were mostly sidelined in last week’s hearings; the board appeared to pay more attention than before to what happened before the sentence, to the perspective of victims, and to the details of each crime.   

And it was clear that the rule requiring “exceptional and compelling circumstances” also set a higher bar for applicants to clear.

After denying Smalls’ commutation, the board heard from Corey Turner, who has been incarcerated for 27 years and who has maintained that he did not do the crime for which he’s imprisoned. During the hearing, Turner and his attorney recounted his own rehabilitative journey—he too has earned a G.E.D, taken parenting classes, and held jobs while incarcerated. 

Turner has also served as a law librarian inside the prison, assisting his peers as a jailhouse lawyer. Someone who was incarcerated with Turner and has since been released from prison wrote a letter of support recounting that Turner had helped fellow prisoners interpret the law and craft legal strategies.

During the 47-minute hearing devoted to Turner’s case, though, panelists only asked him one question about rehabilitation efforts during his lengthy imprisonment.

After one board member asked Turner what was exceptional about his application, he replied, “This is not an environment that’s designed for human beings to flourish,” explaining that instead of turning to despair and violence, he had tried to heal from a traumatic life and become a better father and person. “The only evidence that is compelling that I have to bring before you today, ma’am, is myself, my lived example. That’s all I have. And I hope it’s enough for you.” 

“I think what’s compelling or exceptional is me,” he said. 

“I commend Mr. Turner for his rehabilitative efforts,” Zaccagnini, the board’s new chair, said later in the hearing. “However, it does not rise to the level of compelling and exceptional that would warrant a commutation of his sentence.” 

The board denied Turner’s application. Alex Taubes, who represented him and who was a vocal critic of Lamont’s decision to fire Giles in April, told Bolts after the hearing that Turner’s experience underscores how much Connecticut’s commutation policy has changed.

“They’re no longer providing people with second chances who truly earned them and deserved them,” Taubes said. 

Between 2015 and 2019, the Board of Pardons and Paroles granted just five commutations, at which point the board froze the process for two years. This stasis was decried by advocates in the early stages of the pandemic. “There wasn’t a functioning commutations system for a number of years,” Gohara says. Then, in 2021, the board revamped its approach and began accepting applications again; under its new policy, it considered 11 criteria when determining whether to shorten a sentence. Those included an applicant’s conduct while incarcerated, how serious and recent their conviction was, how shortening a sentence could benefit society, and whether an applicant had been rehabilitated while imprisoned.

These changes made what had been a rarely used power into a progressive tool. Board members publicly touted that they were using clemency to offer an avenue of release for incarcerated people who otherwise didn’t have a way out of prison. They began reducing long sentences given to people who committed crimes when they were younger than age 25, an acknowledgment of advances in the scientific understanding of brain development that shows young adults’ brains are still maturing well into their 20s. 

But Republicans blasted the board’s approach, staging an elaborate event earlier this year with victims’ families during which they called on Lamont to make the board stop commutations. The governor’s decision to replace Giles with Zaccagnini then paved the way for the new policy, which replaced the 11 “suitability” standards that were meant to guide board members with the provision requiring “exceptional and compelling circumstances.” 

David Bothwell, an advisor for the board, told Bolts in a statement that the new rules improve the process. “This policy puts the onus on the applicant to present to the Board extraordinary and compelling reasons that warrant commutation of sentence,” he said. “It does this through a procedure that is fair, open and transparent, and where victim input is acknowledged, valued, and respected.”

Bothwell said that eliminating the suitability criteria will allow “a broader range of individuals to make their cases to the Board.” He also laid out that, “in making a decision, the board will consider exceptional personal growth and development, efforts to improve his/her surroundings and the lives of those he/she share those surroundings with, the serious nature of the offense, prior criminal history, impact on the victim and victim’s family and the total length of sentence and time served.”

Lamont’s office told Bolts in a statement that the governor is “encouraged that Chairwoman Zaccagnini and the staff at the Board of Pardons and Paroles met with all of the involved parties and developed a revised process that takes into account their concerns.”

This summer, Lamont signed into law a bill that will expand parole eligibility for people convicted of crimes they committed before age 21. The law comes amid a wave of reforms nationwide meant to create more paths to release for people sentenced while young, and it targets a population that Connecticut’s prior commutations policy looked on favorably. Parole applications would be reviewed by the Board of Paroles and Pardons as well.

The Aug. 30 hearing also raised questions about whether applicants who maintain their innocence can still succeed in front of the board.

Although Turner and his lawyer emphasized his rehabilitation when they made their case to the board, his application was also rooted in his claim that he did not commit the crime he was convicted of, which seemed to bother the panel hearing his application. 

“We don’t retry cases,” Zaccagnini said. “That is for a court to decide.” At one point Joy Chance, another board member, asked Turner why he never mentioned the victims of his crime. “Ma’am, I didn’t commit this crime,” Turner said. “I’ve been in prison for 27 and a half years for a crime that I didn’t commit.” 

Chance doubled down. “Why wouldn’t you have expressed some kind of remorse for the victim, even if you say you didn’t do it?” she asked. “It’s not that I don’t care,” Turner responded. “I didn’t commit this crime.”

While the panelists were deliberating, Taubes interrupted them to say that Turner and he had focused their presentation on Turner’s mentorship, education and rehabilitation, and that it was the board that had brought up the innocence claim. “You’re using his innocence against him, and it is a travesty of injustice,” he said. 

Bothwell told Bolts that someone who maintains their innocence can apply for a commutation, and it is not a hindrance to their getting a commutation. 

Still, Taubes believes the hearing marked a change from how the previous board approached such cases. He named four clients who maintained their innocence but who received a commutation between 2021 and April of this year, including Norman Gaines, who was released from prison after his sentence was commuted in 2022 and who testified at a legislative hearing in March. “When I was talking to the panel at the Board of Pardons and Parole, that I would do my best to be a beacon of the community, I would like them to know I’ve been keeping my word,” Gaines said.

During the Aug. 30 hearing, the board did commute the sentence of Miguel Sanchez, who had received a 60-year sentence for a murder he committed when he was 17. Sanchez apologized to the family of the young man he killed, acknowledging that his reckless and violent actions profoundly altered the course of not only he and his victim’s lives, but those of their surviving family members, as well. 

“I have spent almost 60 percent of my life in prison due to my immature and irresponsible actions as a teenager,” Sanchez said. “However, I am no longer that immature youth. I remain in prison as a matured and educated middle-aged man, who at 45 years old has focused on helping transform not only myself, but others as well through education.”

The board commuted Sanchez’s sentence by 15 years; he could be eligible for a juvenile parole hearing beginning next year. Board members highlighted that he helped teach college classes to his incarcerated peers early in the pandemic, when outside volunteers weren’t allowed in prisons. They noted that his brother, a correctional officer at another state prison, offered to help him navigate a new life outside of prison, should he get released early.

The board did not explicitly ask Sanchez about “compelling and exceptional circumstances,” as they did with Smalls and Turner. They commended his rehabilitative efforts and the programs he has completed in the past 26 years.

“He has done everything possible, and then some,” Zaccagnini said. “He has gone above and beyond to assist others throughout his incarceration and give back.”

The post Connecticut’s New Commutation Policy Raises the Bar for Second Chances appeared first on Bolts.

The GOP had staged the event to protest a rise in clemency in the state. After years of a near-total freeze in commutations—a rare path out of prison for hundreds of people who are serving decadeslong or life sentences in the state—the board granted several dozens in 2022. That fell short of reformers’ demands but the GOP still took issue. “I am calling on Governor Lamont to stop this right now,” said John Kissel, the highest-ranking Republican senator on the Judiciary Committee, who was accompanied at the event by families of violent crime victims.

Governor Ned Lamont, a Democrat, followed Kissel’s call on April 10, removing Carleton Giles, a former police officer, as chair of the board. Giles, who is Black, had authority as chair to decide which board members would hear commutations, and Republicans painted him as the architect of the rise in releases. 

Lamont appointed Jennifer Medina Zaccagnini to replace him as chair. Within days Zaccagnini put a hold on all commutation hearings until further notice. 

Lamont’s move dismayed state advocates who have pushed Connecticut to reduce its prison population and address persistent racial disparities in incarceration.

“For a parole chairman—who is a police officer, who was doing his job according to the law—to be removed for such a small number of releases, it sends a chilling effect that could set us backward in criminal justice reform for years, if not decades,” said Alex Taubes, an attorney who has represented dozens of people who received commutations from the board. 

Connecticut drastically lengthened prison terms starting in the late 1980s. This led many people who committed violent crimes as teenagers or young adults to receive prison terms that makes it likely they’ll die behind bars unless they receive clemency. 

“The longest sentences have not generally gone in Connecticut to the worst criminals. They go to the people with the worst lawyers,” Taubes told Bolts. “That’s why the group of people who are eligible for commutations is disproportionately Black and brown people, who don’t have the kinds of networks and connections that allow them to get the lesser sentences in the first place.” 

Roughly 700 people are serving life sentences in the state and can expect to die in prison without clemency, according to a study by the Sentencing Project. The majority of them are Black. (Only 13 percent of Connecticut’s overall population is Black.)

Those disparities meant clemency has overwhelmingly benefited people of color. The board identified that nearly two-thirds of the people who received commutations in 2022 are Black, and a quarter as Hispanic. “Stopping the commutations is a racist policy,” Taubes said.

Taubes and like-minded advocates have pressured the board to give people growing old behind bars a second chance but they’ve been frustrated by what they see as a dysfunctional system. Connecticut is one of six states where the power to commute a prison sentence is vested entirely in an independent body with no direct role for the governor. The board has “unfettered discretion” in how it uses its commutation powers, an unusually broad mandate that has at times proved paralyzing. During the early pandemic, as other states acted to relieve prisons, the board was accepting no applications and issuing no commutations. 

Even over the past year, under Giles, the board kept the pathway to clemency very narrow. In 2021 and 2022, it restricted the criteria to be eligible to even ask for a commutation, for instance forcing people to wait two additional years to apply. It also decided that people who are serving sentences of life without parole are ineligible to receive a commutation. Miriam Gohara, a professor at Yale Law School who has represented two people applying for commutations, insists that state statute says they should be. “That was something that they should not have done, but I think they did it as an opportunity to try to assuage their critics,” Gohara said.

The board is denying most applications. Its statistics show that, in 2022, more than three-fourth of applicants were rejected. 

But the board also took steps to flex its clemency powers. In 2021, it began taking applications after a two-year hiatus. Its first commutation in two years shortened a sick man’s 75-year sentence so he would be eligible for compassionate parole, a program meant for people with long sentences and serious medical conditions. 

They also took a new look at people who were sentenced to long terms as kids or young adults, a population that makes up the bulk of those granted commutations in 2022. In recent sessions, some legislators proposed expanding release opportunities for people who committed crimes before age 25, pointing to scientific research that shows the brain keeps developing until the mid-20s; while their bill proved unsuccessful, the board soon appeared to heed their arguments. 

“You’re talking about younger individuals who were sentenced in the ‘90s for sentences that we would not give out as a state anymore,” said Representative Steven Stafstrom, a Democrat who co-chairs the Judiciary Committee. “We are living in a very different era, I think in the nation but certainly in Connecticut, in terms of how long folks should be sentenced for certain crimes, particularly crimes that were committed at a very young age.”

“What these commutations did is modernize or correct the sentence, based on what today’s sentencing guidelines would be,” he said. 

Julio Rodriguez is among the people who benefited from this second look. After more than 22 years in prison after being convicted as an accessory to murder, he was sent to a halfway house in July after the board commuted over two decades off his 50-year sentence. 

“When we was younger, some of us don’t even know what the heck we was doing. We was just doing it under peer pressure, under the gangs, under drugs’ influence,” he said. “It’s kind of like hard for somebody that came really young like that and grew up in jail and never had a chance to become somebody.” He added, “We became men in there, grandfathers. We was kids.”

Rodriguez was 19 when he went to prison. Now, he has a job detailing cars, and he says he wishes the public knew about all the people he left behind in prison who, like him, bettered themselves even though they had years left on their sentences. 

“There’s people in there that deserve a chance,” he says.

The decisions made by Lamont and his new appointee, Zaccagnini, have put their hopes on hold.

“Maybe it’s time to take a pause and let the legislature weigh in on what they think the rules of the road ought to be and make sure the advocates on both sides are at the table so we have a full discussion,” Lamont told The CT Mirror. After the board held a meeting with state officials and lawmakers last week, Lamont’s spokesperson said there would be no new commutations until “an expeditious review” of the board’s policies.

The governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment. 

Lamont has generally taken a different tack on criminal justice than his predecessor, Democrat Dan Malloy. Malloy promoted initiatives that reduced punishment for drug possession offenses and expediting pardon and parole processes, advocating for what he called a “second chance society.” Malloy also pressured the board to grant more parole applications.

Lamont largely ignored calls by criminal justice reformers to use his soft powers—that includes the authority to fire and appoint the board’s members—to push for more releases during the pandemic. When the GOP made the inverse argument this year, he acted to force a pause.

Connecticut Republicans have mounted tough-on-crime attacks for years, including targeting Lamont and other Democrats in the run-up to the 2022 midterms. In 2021, they convened multiple press conferences about car thefts. But Republicans did poorly last fall. Lamont won re-election by double digits and Democrats expanded their legislative majorities. 

“Voters in Connecticut sent a clear message in the fall that they were not buying whatever narrative the Republicans were trying to sell on crime,” said Gohara.

Despite these defeats, Republicans kept up their attacks on the board for being too willing to approve applications. At the press conference last month, they warned that “serious criminals” and “violent offenders” were being let out of prison decades before the end of their sentences. 

The board granted zero commutations in 2020, then only one in 2021. In 2022, it granted 71, a surge but still a small share of Connecticut’s incarcerated population. As of April 1, 2023, there were 10,010 people in the state’s unified system of prisons and jails. 

“This is why this whole thing is kind of absurd: the board has been relatively conservative in its approach to its power,” says Democratic Senator Gary Winfield, co-chair of the Judiciary Committee. “People saw a spike, recognized an opportunity to put victims in front of everybody and say, ‘We’re doing the wrong thing,’” he added.

Michael Lawlor, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven and under secretary of criminal justice policy and planning under Malloy, champions commutations as an important tool for rehabilitation.

“Should we have some type of avenue to consider some of these folks for a shot at release before they die?” he asks. “Without this option, there’s no hope at all that they will ever get out, and there’s no incentive to behave yourself, and there’s also no incentive to do anything constructive: take courses, express remorse, demonstrate that you’re a different person.”

Despite losing the chairmanship, Giles will remain on the Board of Pardons and Paroles as a regular member. Both legislative chambers voted to reappoint him to that position in April, even though some Democrats joined Republicans in opposing him. Two other board members who decided on commutations with Giles also survived legislative votes.

But Giles will no longer be in charge of the commutation process and he lost the prerogative of shaping the rules and deciding who gets to hear commutation applications.

Taubes says Giles’s demotion is a blow to reformers’ hope of using clemency to lessen incarceration. “If parole boards become subject to the political whims of the moment, let alone the least common denominator of some Republican misinformation campaign, then we will never be able to realize the potential value of parole boards in criminal justice reform,” he said.

Similar dynamics have percolated in other states like New York or Virginia, where reformers hope that state officials will staff the boards responsible for commutations or parole with people who are more open to second chances, while Republicans have sought to block changes. In Pennsylvania, which has near-record numbers of people serving life sentences, then-Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman worked to make the state’s Board of Pardons much more amenable to clemency and faced heavy GOP attacks over it in 2022, only to win his U.S. Senate race. 

Fetterman appointed formerly incarcerated Pennsylvanians and decarceral activists to work for the board. “We’ve all been in need of mercy and forgiveness at some point,” Celeste Trusty told Bolts last year after she became secretary of the board. (Trusty left the board this year after Fetterman went to Washington.) “But that’s not applied at all to how we sentence people.”

Gohara is dismayed that Connecticut, a former leader in criminal justice reform, now seems to be turning its back to that perspective.

“If it’s happening in Connecticut,” she said, “then you can only imagine, ‘Where else would be vulnerable to this?’”

The post Connecticut Governor Scrambles Pardons Board and Halts Clemency appeared first on Bolts.

If they win in November, Trump-endorsed election deniers like Arizona’s Mark Finchem and Michigan’s Kristina Kamaro could seize the reins of election administration in key swing states on agendas built on disproven fraud claims and destabilizing changes like eliminating mail-in voting. But these high-profile candidates are just the tip of the iceberg: 17 Republicans are running for secretary of state—or for governor in states where the governor appoints the secretary—after denying the results of the 2020 election, seeking to overturn them, or refusing to affirm the outcome. A handful of additional Republicans haven’t outright questioned Biden’s win but have still amplified Trump’s false statements about widespread fraud.

Trump’s Big Lie, then, is defining the political stakes in most of the 35 states where the secretary of state’s office is on the line, directly or indirectly, in November. 

But beyond the threats of election subversion, secretaries of state affect voting rights in many more subtle ways. Long before Trump, they already featured heated debates around how states run their elections—and how easy or difficult it is for people to register and cast ballots. Secretaries of state may decide the scope of voter roll purges, instruct counties on how many ballot drop boxes to set up, or implement major policies like automatic voter registration. And their word carries great clout in legislative debates over voting. The Big Lie is overshadowing those functions, but in many places these broader issues remain at the forefront. 

This new Bolts guide walks through all of those 35 states, plus Washington, D.C., one by one. Voters are electing their secretary of state directly in 27 states; in another eight, the secretary of state will be selected after the election by public officials—the governor, or lawmakers—who are on the Nov. 8 ballot. (The 15 other states and Puerto Rico will either select theirs after the 2024 cycle or, in a few cases, don’t have a secretary of state at all.)

The stakes are highest in the presidential swing states that election deniers may capture, namely Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania (via the governor’s race). But many other states feature such candidates, from Alabama to Maryland; in Wyoming, a Trump-endorsed election denier is the only candidate on the ballot.

And other pressing voting concerns are also shaping these battles. In Ohio, for instance, voting rights groups have repeatedly clashed with the sitting secretary of state on voting access in jails or the availability of ballot drop boxes. In Georgia, the midterms are unfolding in the shadow of new restrictions adopted last year, with the incumbent’s support. In Vermont, the likely next secretary of state says she wants to support local experiments to expand voter eligibility. 

Not all secretaries of state handle election administration; in a few states such as Illinois and South Carolina, they have nothing at all to do with it. Even where secretaries of state oversee some aspects of the election system, the scope of their role can vary greatly. Arizona’s secretary of state, for instance, must certify election results; Michigan’s secretary, by contrast, plays no role in the certification process (that role is reserved to a board of canvassers) but does oversee and guide municipal officials on how to run their elections. 

To clarify this confusing landscape, Bolts published two databases this year. The first details, state by state, which state offices prepare and administer an election (Who Runs our Elections?). The second details, state by state, which state offices handle the counting, canvassing, and certification stages (Who Counts Our Elections?). 

Explore our state breakdown of the 2022 midterms below, or click on a specific state in this interactive map.

Secretaries of State in 2022

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#AL

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#AR

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#AZ

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#CA

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#CO

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections//#CT

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#FL

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#GA

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#IA

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#IL

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#ID

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#IN

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#KS

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#MD

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#MA

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#ME

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#MI

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#MN

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#ND

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#NE

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#NH

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#NM

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#NV

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#NY

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#OH

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#OK

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#PA

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#RI

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#SC

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#SD

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#TX

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#VT

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#WA

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#WI

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#WY

https://boltsmag.org/guide-to-2022-secretary-of-state-elections/#DC

For further reading, also dive into Louis Jacobson’s electoral assessment of all secretary of state races, and the FiveThirtyEight analysis of how each state’s Republican nominee is responding to questions about the 2020 elections. And you can

Alabama

Wes Allen, a Republican lawmaker who won a tight summer primary for secretary of state, has already shown his conspiracist leanings: He said earlier this year that, as secretary of state, he would promptly withdraw Alabama from the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), a organization that helps 30 states maintain voter rolls, citing George Soros to explain his decision shortly after a far-right website published an article that falsely tied ERIC to Soros. 

Allen faces Democratic nominee Pamela Laffitte in November. In this ruby red state, he is likely to win and replace John Merrill, the retiring Republican; Merrill is known for blocking people who criticize his handling of voting rights on social media and for denying the state’s history of voter suppression.

Arizona

Mark Finchem is arguably the election denier with the best chance to win and take over a swing state’s election system. A member of the far-right Oath Keeper militia, which was involved in the Jan. 6 insurrection, Finchem falsely claims that the 2020 election results were fraudulent, has pushed for controversial election audits, and wants to see sweeping changes to Arizona’s election system, including ending early voting and ending the use of electronic voting machines. If he wins, he would oversee the 2024 election, including being in charge of certifying the next presidential results. His intentions would be in question given his continued statements about 2020. He introduced legislation earlier this year to decertify the last election and “set aside” the ballots in three counties, including Maricopa and Pima counties, which together cover two-thirds of the state, as “irredeemably compromised”—a position he repeated in a debate last week.

“When we have conspiracy theories and lies like the ones Mr. Finchem has just shared, based in no real evidence, what we end up doing is eroding the faith that we have in each other as citizens,” responded Adrian Fontes, the Democratic nominee, during the debate. Fontes ran elections in Arizona’s most populous county as Maricopa County Recorder during the early stages of the pandemic; in March 2020, he tried to mail ballots to registered voters during the presidential primary, though his effort was ultimately struck down by courts, and Finchem has criticized him for it. Fontes has also been supportive of expanding voting opportunities through reforms like automatic voter registration. 

Arkansas

Republican incumbent John Thurston says elections are secure in Arkansas, but he also echoes those who sow doubts about how the 2020 election unfolded across the country, and his staff attended a conspiracist symposium hosted by Mike Lindell at state expense. In this staunch red state where Democrats have not won any statewide race since 2010, Thurston faces Democrat Anna Beth Gorman in November.

California

When U.S. Senator Kamala Harris became vice president in 2021, it sparked a game of musical chairs in California politics. Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Secretary of State Alex Padilla to replace Harris, and then appointed Shirley Weber to replace Padilla as secretary of state. A former Democratic lawmaker who championed civil rights legislation, such as a landmark law in 2020 to fight racism in juries, Weber is now seeking a full term. She crushed the all-party primary in June with 59 percent of the vote; Republican Rob Bernosky, who she will now face again in November’s Top 2 runoff, received 19 percent. (Two candidates who, unlike Bernosky, ran as election deniers won a combined 13 percent.) 

Colorado

Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, has clashed since 2020 with Tina Peters, the Trump-aligned Republican county clerk who is now under indictment for allegedly allowing unauthorized access to voting equipment. The two seemed headed for a showdown in 2022 , but Peters lost the Republican primary in June to Pam Anderson, a former county clerk who, unlike Peters, accepts the results of the 2020 election. (Other election deniers also lost Republican primaries in Colorado at the county level in the primary, Bolts reported.) 

Griswold has still centered her campaign on the threat of election subversion, pointing to her efforts against Peters but also speaking out against election deniers in the national press. “The country could lose the right to vote,” she told The Guardian in August. Anderson, who is a career election administrator, says she would bring a “professional ethic” into the office, and is making the case that Griswold is too focused on advancing her party’s goals. Anderson also supports the major features of Colorado’s system, notably universal mail-in voting.

Connecticut

Stephanie Thomas, a Democratic lawmaker, faces Republican Dominic Rapini in an open contest. Rapini is the former board chair of an organization that promoted conspiracies about the 2020 presidential election, and he himself has raised doubts and false claims of fraud about the legitimate outcome of the race. While Thomas is favored in this blue-leaning state, observers stress that the rhetoric about voter fraud and election denialism can erode public confidence in voting systems even if Rapini loses. In addition, the two candidates disagree on rules around voter ID, which Rapini wants to tighten, and early voting. The state is holding a referendum in November on authorizing in-person early voting, an issue that Thomas supports and Rapini opposes.

Florida (via the governor’s race)

The power to appoint the secretary of state lies with the governor in Florida. Earlier this year, DeSantis—who has a penchant for filing government offices with his allies—appointed Cord Byrd, a staunch conservative who had championed the state’s recent voter restrictions while in the legislature. Byrd has refused to say whether he believes the 2020 election results were legitimate, and he has amplified false rhetoric about widespread fraud. The state’s new elections police force resides in the secretary of state’s office, and Byrd was involved in August in trumpeting the criminal charges against 20 people who had been previously allowed to vote for alleged voting law violations. 

DeSantis is up for reelection against Democrat Charlie Crist, who was the state’s Republican governor more than a decade ago and had a very different approach to voting. Crist would have the authority to replace Byrd should he win.

Georgia

Incumbent Brad Raffensperger famously rebuffed Trump’s attempts to “find” more votes in the 2020 election, and proceeded to defeat a Trump-endorsed election denier in the Republican primary with surprising ease. But Raffensperger has also supported the new voter restrictions that Republicans have adopted since 2020, including tightening procedures around mail-in and early voting, and banning groups from passing out food or water to voters waiting in line. He defended the measures in 2021 as a way to “restore voter confidence.”

Raffensperger faces Democratic nominee Bee Nguyen, a state representative who voted against the 2021 law, has criticized this record and is running on a platform of improving ballot access in Georgia with voter outreach efforts such as translating election materials into more languages and establishing sites for people to submit vote-by-mail applications. 

Idaho

Phil McGrane, the county clerk of Ada County, narrowly defeated two conspiracy theorists in the Republican primary for secretary of state in May. In a state as conservative as Idaho, that was the hard part; he is now favored in November over Democrat Shawn Keenan. On the one hand, this primary marked a defeat for fervent election deniers, who attacked McGrane for accepting grants from a private foundation—as did more than a dozen other counties in Idaho alone—to help run the 2020 election. 

Yet, when asked by Bolts if he agreed that Biden was the legitimate president, McGrane demurred, only saying that Biden was in the White House. He has spoken against Democratic proposals to strengthen voting rights. As county clerk, McGrane has also taken initiatives to make voting more accessible, such as setting up “food truck voting,” i.e. mobile voting centers, and setting up on-demand ballot printers, Bolts reported.

Illinois

This secretary of state’s office is not involved in election administration. (Alexi Giannoulias, the last Democrat to lose a U.S. Senate race in Illinois, faces Republican lawmaker Dan Brady. Incumbent Jesse White is retiring after 24 years leading an office that handles driver’s licenses and state records.)

Indiana

Diego Morales rode the Big Lie to oust the incumbent secretary of state, Holli Sullivan, at the Republican Party’s state convention; he echoed Trump’s claims about fraud in the 2020 election, which he called a “scam.” He has since softened those statements, including calling Biden the legitimate president, and has walked back his previous call to cut Indiana’s number of early voting days by half. Still, he has courted controversy, as the Indianapolis Star reported in July that he used campaign funds to buy a personal vehicle. Morales also twice left jobs at the secretary of state’s office over poor performance.

Democrats see an opening to win a rare statewide office in this reliably red state, and Democrat Destiny Wells is hitting Morales for his ties with the far-right and for wanting to limit voting options like mail-in ballots. 

Iowa

Iowa Republicans have tightened access to voting in recent years with a pair of measures that restrict mail voting, among other policies. Democratic nominee Joel Miller, who currently serves as an elections official in the state’s second most populous county, said in an interview with Bolts that he is running because he opposes those reforms and wants to “make voting easy again” in Iowa. He faults his opponent, Republican Secretary of State Paul Pate, for failing to oppose these voting restrictions. Pate is running for a third term, and the state has veered significantly to the right since his first election.

Kansas

The Big Lie split the Republican primary, with Secretary of State Scott Schwab pushing back against the former president’s conspiracies while his challenger embraced them. Schwab survived by 10 percentage points and now faces Democrat Jeanna Repass, who notes that Schwab has still supported restrictions on ballot access that she vows to fight. In this staunch red state, Democrats have not won an election for secretary of state since 1948.

Maine (via legislature) 

The Big Lie is in the air in Maine. Paul LePage, the former Republican governor who is running to regain his job back, has trumpeted unfounded suspicions of voter fraud and suggested that people were bused in from out of state to vote in Maine—conspiracist claims very similar to Trump’s. Democratic Secretary of State Shenna Bellows has pushed back, faulting him for wanting it to be harder for people to be “exercising their constitutional right to vote.” 

Whether Bellows keeps her job depends on the legislative races in November. A joint session of the legislature selects the secretary of state every two years. Although the GOP has not put a Republican in this office since it briefly seized both chambers in 2010, it has an outside shot at flipping the legislature and thus the secretary of state’s office this fall. 

Maryland (via the governor’s race)

Dan Cox, the Republican nominee for governor, is a staunch election denier who helped organize travel to Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021. If he wins the governorship, he would get to appoint a secretary of state. (Many election administration duties in Maryland are in the hands of a board of elections; but the secretary of state does sit on the board of canvassers, the body that is tasked with certifying election results.) That said, the state Senate must confirm a governor’s nominee in Maryland, and that chamber is highly likely to stay in Democratic hands. In addition, Democrat Wes Moore is heavily favored in polling and prognostications to beat Cox and to get to appoint a secretary of state himself.

Massachusetts

In his quest for a record eighth term, Secretary of State Bill Galvin has already completed the hardest step by prevailing in the contentious Democratic primary against a local NAACP leader who faulted him for not promoting ballot access proactively enough, as Bolts reported. In this blue state, the party’s nomination is typically tantamount to a general election win. 

Still, the profile of his Republican opponent keeps this on Bolts’s list of elections to watch. Rayla Campbell has closely aligned with Trump and has repeated his lies that the election was stolen. 

If Galvin prevails, keep an eye on how he shifts over his next term. After facing a progressive challenger in the 2018 primary and easily beating him, Galvin grew more supportive of pro-voter reforms such as same-day registration. 

Michigan

Republican nominee Kristina Karamo, an avowed election denier endorsed by Trump, would lead Michigan’s loose constellation of  more than 1,600 local election offices if she wins the secretary of state race. As Bolts reported, Michigan has one of the most decentralized voting systems in the country, but the secretary of state would still have the authority to issue directives and conduct audits of local offices—functions that Karamo could weaponize for her election denialist agenda if elected. Republicans have aggressively targeted election officials who resisted their effort to overturn the 2020 election in the state, and observers worry about how Karamo could further unwind the system. “It’s one thing to be feeling that heat from the outside,” David Levine, a fellow at the non-profit Alliance for Securing Democracy, told Bolts. “If the arsonist is inside the firehouse you’ve got a whole different problem.”

Karamo is trying to oust Democratic incumbent Jocelyn Benson, who oversaw the 2020 election and has defended the administration of that election—including an expansion of absentee voting—against critics. 

Minnesota

Kim Crockett, the Republican nominee, has mirrored Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. At a party convention, she aired a conspiracist video that used anti-Semitic tropes, which led to an apology by the state Republican Party’s chair. If she wins in November against Democratic incumbent Steve Simon, she would gain the power to oversee the state’s election system, which could affect the voting rights of Minnesota’s numerous immigrant communities. As the Sahan Journal previewed, Crockett has a history of making racist and anti-immigrant statements and wants to tighten voter ID restrictions, saying that non-English speaking immigrants have been “exploited for their votes.” Simon, meanwhile, wants to expand language access for voting materials.

Nebraska

Secretary of State Robert Evnen, a Republican, is running unopposed in the general election, but his primary was far more contentious. Evnen secured the GOP nomination in May with just 45 percent of the vote against two candidates who each suggested that elections have security issues and proposed restricting voting procedures; Evnen has rejected fraud allegations, and defended the state’s use of voting machines. But Evnen is also hoping that the state adopts new voter ID requirements, which Nebraskans will be voting on in a ballot measure in November. 

Nevada

Republican Jim Marchant is a lead organizer of the America First slate of secretaries of state candidates, the Trump-aligned coalition who are denying the results of the 2020 elections and laying the groundwork to intervene in 2024. Marchant is vocal about his false beliefs that the 2020 election results were illegitimate, claiming both that the presidency was stolen from Trump and that his own loss in a congressional race was due to fraud. Marchant supported the push for Nevada Republicans to send a slate of false electors to Congress in 2020, and he told The Guardian that he would be open to doing the same in 2024. “We haven’t in Nevada elected anybody since 2006,” Marchant said in January on a podcast. “They have been installed by the deep state cabal.” 

The Republican nominee also wants to end mail-in voting in the state, despite having repeatedly voted by mail in the past. 

Marchant will face Democrat Cisco Aguilar, who has portrayed himself as the sensible alternative to Marchant and his outlandish claims. Aguilar has promised to introduce policy to protect Nevada election workers against “constant harassment” they face at polling places.

New Hampshire (via legislature)

The New Hampshire legislature selects the secretary of state every two years. But despite constant flips in legislative control, lawmakers repeatedly sent Bill Gardner back to the office. Gardner, who served from 1976 until his retirement earlier this year, was a nominal Democrat who defended Republican restrictions in defiance of courts, sat on Trump’s commission to investigate voter fraud, and opposed innovations like online voter registration. His resignation in January elevated his Republican deputy, David Scanlan, to the job. Republicans are slight favorites to keep the legislature in November, though both chambers are in play.

New Mexico

Republican nominee Audrey Trujillo has built her campaign for secretary of state on the Big Lie. As a member of the America First Secretary of State Coalition alongside Nevada’s Marchant and Michigan’s Karamo, Trujillo has  also called for an end to absentee voting except for elderly, disabled, and military citizens. She has also pointed to voting machines as sources of fraud, calling on county election officials to refuse to certify the 2020 election unless a hand count was conducted, adding to the explosive context of ongoing confrontations over conservative efforts in New Mexico to block the certification of elections. 

Trujillo is running against Democratic incumbent Maggie Toulouse Oliver, who has been a vocal proponent of expanding ballot access in the state. In the current legislative session, as Bolts reported in February, Oliver rolled out a landmark package that would have expanded voter eligibility, made Election Day a holiday, and eased mail-in voting, but the package derailed in the legislature. 

New York (via the governor’s race)

This secretary of state is appointed by the governor, and does not oversee election administration. (The current office-holder is an appointee of Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who is facing Republican Lee Zeldin, a member of the U.S. House who voted against approving the 2020 presidential result in Congress; the governor also appoints members of the State Board of Canvassers, who certify results, upon consultation with legislative leaders.)

North Dakota

The Republican primary was critical in this red-state open race, and it saw an easy victory by lawmaker Michael Howe over a candidate who was falsely saying the 2020 presidential result was uncertain. But Howe himself is suggesting that there are problems regarding election integrity in the state, while Democratic candidate Jeffrey Powell says the GOP’s talk of “election integrity” is “code word for voter suppression.” The office of the retiring secretary of state faced complaints and settled lawsuits over poor ballot access for Native residents.

Ohio

Former GOP lawmaker John Adams ran for secretary of state by touting the Big Lie, only to be soundly defeated by Republican incumbent Frank LaRose. But LaRose’s victory was hardly a last stand by moderate forces. He has long clashed with voting rights groups over restrictions to ballot access. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, Bolts reported in March, LaRose sided with Trump’s crusade against mail-in voting and he successfully appealed to overturn a court ruling that would have made it easier for eligible Ohioans to vote from jail.

Since then, LaRose has ramped up talk of voter fraud, secured Trump’s endorsement in his re-election bid, and floated impeaching the state’s Republican chief justice for striking down his party’s gerrymanders.

LaRose now faces Democrat Chelsea Clark, a Forest Park city councilmember, in a state that has swung red over the past decade. Clark says she would push for reforms to expand participation like automatic voter registration and reverse the state’s aggressive purge policies.

Oklahoma (via the governor’s race)

This secretary of state’s office does not oversee election administration. (The winner of the governor’s race, which features Republican incumbent Kevin Stitt, Democratic challenger Joy Hofmeister, and two other candidates, will have the power to appoint a secretary of state, who will oversee clerical functions like corporation registrations. The current office-holder is a Stitt appointee.)

Pennsylvania (via the governor’s race)

Doug Mastriano, the Trump acolyte who participated in efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and was outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, would have the power to appoint the next secretary of state if he wins the governor’s race in November over Democratic nominee Josh Shapiro. Mastriano has repeatedly signaled he would appoint a secretary of state who shares his mindset and, as Bolts reported in July, the secretary of state could unleash chaos into the state’s system, with election observers worried primarily about the process of certifying results. A secretary of state hand-picked by Mastriano could abuse their power in 2024 by trying to refuse election results from blue-leaning counties like Allegheny (Pittsburgh) or Philadelphia. “It would be uncertain and destabilizing,” Rick Hasen, a professor at UCLA Law who specializes in election law, told Bolts.

Rhode Island

The incumbent secretary of state’s failed bid for governor opened up her office, and Democratic nominee Gregg Amore is favored to take her place in this blue-leaning state. He is a former state representative who advocated for expanding ballot access, including through sponsoring the Let Rhode Island Vote Act, which expanded mail voting and went into effect earlier this year. Amore now faces Republican Pat Cortellessa, who opposes the legislation, telling the Warwick Beacon that it endangers election security and goes too far in enabling people to vote by mail. Cortellessa also wants ballot drop boxes removed from street corners. 

South Carolina

This secretary of state’s office does not oversee election administration. (Republican incumbent Mark Hammond faces Democrat Rosemounda “Peggy” Butler.)

South Dakota

Monae Johnson’s conspiracist allegations that the state’s election system lacks integrity helped her oust Republican incumbent Steve Barnett at a party convention earlier this year. That alone makes her the favorite to become this red state’s next secretary of state. Still, Johnson has tried to erase some of her past rhetoric from her website since securing the party’s nomination, and Democratic nominee Tom Cool is attacking Republicans for threatening South Dakota’s voting systems. “They keep whining about election integrity, which we know are their code words for voter suppression,” Cool said in July. (Note that one of the roles of the secretary of state’s office in South Dakota is to oversee the ballot petition process, which has been targeted by state Republicans, as Bolts reported in June.) 

Texas (via the governor’s race)

Republican Governor Greg Abbott faces Democratic nominee and one-time U.S. Senate hopeful Beto O’Rourke, and the winner of this governor’s contest will have the power to appoint a secretary of state. Last year, Abbott picked John Scott, a lawyer who worked with the Trump campaign on a lawsuit seeking to overturn the 2020 election results in Pennsylvania. As secretary of state, Scott has defended the security of Texas’ elections against local activists who oppose the use of voting machines. O’Rourke has made it a core campaign plank to fault Abbott for championing many voter restrictions, and has pledged to ease the voter registration process and limit voter purges, some of which is handled by the secretary of state’s office. A governor’s appointee is subject to confirmation by the state Senate, which is likely to stay in Republican hands.

Vermont

By U.S. standards, Vermont is pushing the boundaries of democratic participation. The state adopted universal vote-by-mail, and some towns are now looking to allow noncitizens and 16- and 17-year olds to vote in local elections. Vermont is only one of the few places in the country that allow anyone to vote from prison. Sarah Copeland Hanzas, a state lawmaker and the Democratic nominee to take over the state’s open secretary of state office, supports these policies. She tells Bolts that, if elected, she would look for new ways to expand both ballot access and voter registration—including for incarcerated people.

Copeland Hanzas’s Republican opponent in this blue-leaning state is H. Brooke Paige, a perennial candidate who is part of the large network of GOP election deniers running for secretary of state as he echoes the former president’s lies about the 2020 election.

Washington State

Republicans have won every secretary of state election in Washington State since 1964—that’s 15 consecutive elections. But they won’t even have a candidate on the ballot this November, as the GOP was shut out of the Top 2 spots in the August all-candidate primary.

The two candidates who moved on to the runoff are Steve Hobbs, the Democratic incumbent appointed by Governor Jay Inslee in 2021 after Republican Kim Wyman resigned to take a job in the Biden administration, and Julie Anderson, the Pierce County clerk who is running as an independent. (A Republican lawmaker, Brad Klippert, is also mounting a write-in campaign.) Before becoming secretary of state, Hobbs was a moderate lawmaker who antagonized progressives in the legislature and fought some of Inslee’s priorities, a record that Inslee touted as a sign that Hobbs would be an antidote to “political polarization.” Still, Anderson is grounding her bid on the argument that a secretary of state should be nonpartisan; she also makes the case that she, unlike Hobbs, has worked in election administration for more than a decade.

Washington, D.C.

This secretary of state is appointed by the mayor, and is not involved in election administration. (Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser is running for re-election, and she is heavily favored.)

Wisconsin

This secretary of state’s office is not involved in election administration in Wisconsin, but GOP nominee Amy Loundenbeck wants it to regain oversight over elections from the State Elections Commissions, a bipartisan agency besieged by conservative attacks since 2020. The Associated Press reports she is remaining vague about the specifics, though some GOP lawmakers have already introduced legislation to this effect. (The party would need to flip the governorship for such a bill shift to stand a chance.) Loudenbeck has said she does not believe the 2020 election results should be overturned but has echoed conspiracies about election funding, and faces Democratic incumbent Doug LaFolette, who is seeking an eleventh term.

Wyoming

Chuck Gray is the only candidate running for secretary of state, making him the only election denier who is already virtually guaranteed to win in November

Boosted by Trump’s endorsement, Gray prevailed in a competitive GOP primary over fellow lawmaker Tara Nethercott in August, and no Democrat or independent filed to run against him in November. And while Wyoming may be the least populous state in the union, his primary opponent warns to not disregard the effects that Gray’s rhetoric may have. “What happens here is certainly an example to the rest of the nation for where the country is going, and how we get caught up in perceived fears that aren’t relevant to our own communities,” Nethercott told Bolts in August. “That kind of rhetoric just continues to serve to undermine the integrity of our elections, and therefore undermines democracy.”

What about the remaining states?

Three states have no secretary of state at all (Alaska, Hawaii, and Utah). Three will elect their secretary of state in 2023 (Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi). Five will elect their secretary of state in 2024 (Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Oregon, West Virginia). Two will elect governors or lawmakers in 2024 who will then select a secretary of state (Delaware and Tennessee, as well as Puerto Rico). And two will elect governors in 2025 who could then select a secretary of state (New Jersey and Virginia).

The post Your Guide to All 35 States Deciding Their Next Secretary of State appeared first on Bolts.

But another redistricting practice that skews the geography of political power is still flying under the national radar: prison gerrymandering. 

Most states count incarcerated people at their prison’s location rather than at their last address for purposes of redistricting. This inflates the power of the predominantly white and rural areas, where prisons are often located, at the expense of cities and communities of color, which suffer the brunt of mass incarceration. The skew is compounded by the fact that incarcerated people are barred from voting in all but two states, silenced even as their presence bolsters the representation of the areas they are displaced to.

Nevada and Washington State both adopted legislation this year to end prison gerrymandering. In the next round of redistricting, they will count people at their last home address. Governors Steve Sisolak and Jay Inslee, both Democrats, signed these bills into law in May. 

Three other states have ended prison gerrymandering: California, Delaware, and Maryland. New York has also done so for its legislative map, though not for its congressional one. These states will identify the home address of incarcerated people, adjust the Census Bureau’s count (which decided to keep counting people where they are incarcerated, despite pleas by advocates) accordingly, and in so doing determine the new population totals they will use in redistricting. 

But this leaves 44 states that have not reformed their redistricting process. That includes Maine and Vermont, which enable incarcerated people to vote, but still engage in prison gerrymandering when redrawing their maps, according  These states are about to once again gerrymander their maps by treating prisons as population centers. 

The clock is ticking if states are to change this: The redistricting process begins in two years, and some states may need more time than others to collect the information they need to adjust the census count. 

“There is still plenty of time left for states to pass reforms,” Aleks Kajstura, the legal director of the Prison Policy Initiative, an organization that has long worked on this issue, told the Political Report. “The particular cut-off for action will be unique to each state’s redistricting timeline; most should act by the end of 2020, while some may be able to pass reforms as late as 2021. That said, the sooner the better, particularly to allow for a smooth process for the transfer of data between the Department of Corrections and redistricting authorities.”

But many states chose inaction in 2019. Bills against prison gerrymandering were filed this year in Connecticut, Illinois, Oregon, and Rhode Island, but these legislatures all adjourned for the year without any of these proposals even making it out of one committee. There is an ongoing lawsuit filed by the NAACP against prison gerrymandering in Connecticut. 

“Connecticut is dragged down by a sometimes insurmountable inertia, and we have to cut to that through that by bringing more voices to the legislature,” state Senator William Haskell, who supported this bill, told the Political Report. He added that some lawmakers make assumptions regarding what incarcerated people consider their residence, but are not willing to listen. “The problem when we talk about mass incarceration is that we can’t bring every voice to the [State] Capitol because many of them are behind bars.” 

Another obstacle to reform is the political clout of legislators from areas that benefit from prison gerrymandering. “Some of the state’s most powerful lawmakers represent districts with prisons,” Oregon Public Broadcasting reported in May. 

The best chance for another reform left this year lies in New Jersey, where the Senate passed a bill to end prison gerrymandering in February. But the reform has since languished in the Assembly’s State and Local Government Committee. 

Assemblymember Vincent Mazzeo, chairperson of the committee, did not respond to a request for comment on whether the bill would receive a vote in the committee. Mazzeo voted for a similar bill in 2017, when the New Jersey legislature adopted it but then-Governor Chris Christie vetoed it.

Reforms to end prison gerrymandering are only one piece of the puzzle of ensuring democratic representation since, on their own, they still leave the people who are incarcerated disenfranchised. There are parallel efforts around the country to abolish felony disenfranchisement. Haskell introduced such a bill in Connecticut, but it also did not move forward this year. “Some legislators are unable to empathize with the formerly incarcerated or incarcerated because they don’t know anyone in that situation,” he said. “That underlies the need to bring those voices in the democratic process because we need their voices at the table, especially if some legislators aren’t willing to listen and empathize.”

In other legislative news on criminal justice reform:

Colorado: Colorado adopted a new law in May to restore people’s voting rights as soon as they are released from incarceration. The law came into effect this week. Most immediately, this means that the approximately 11,500 Coloradans currently on parole can now vote.  

Louisiana: Governor John Bel Edwards signed into law a bill that shrinks DAs’ power to jail victims of sexual offenses or domestic violence to compel them to testify. The law prohibits such “material witness warrants” in misdemeanor cases; for felony cases, it imposes a list of conditions before someone can be detained. The law was narrowed from its original version, which banned detention altogether, in part because of the opposition of the head of the Louisiana District Attorneys Association.

New York: Efforts to legalize marijuana collapsed in the final day of New York’s legislative session. But the legislature adopted a backup bill, which Governor Andrew Cuomo has said he will sign. The legislation decriminalizes the possession of up to two ounces of marijuana (as opposed to one ounce previously), as well as the act of smoking marijuana in public. It reduces these acts, now misdemeanors, to a violation subject to a ticket and fine. In addition, the legislation provides for the automatic expungement of existing records: The state will vacate past convictions over offenses that are no longer deemed criminal. 

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But state advocates are demanding that politicians who are preparing legalization legislation be more attentive than in the past to confronting the harm that prohibition has caused. “It’s very clear looking at the statistics that the burden of marijuana criminalization and mass incarceration fell upon communities of color and that all the pieces that flow from that, things like losing jobs, losing housing, losing lifetime earnings, all of those collateral consequences also fell upon those communities,” said Roseanne Scotti, state director of the Drug Policy Alliance’s New Jersey office.

“We can’t move forward into the new world where marijuana will be legal and not take extra steps to repair that harm,” she added.

The burgeoning marijuana industry’s benefits are not distributed evenly. Marijuana-related arrests still target African Americans at a higher rate, and many states are timid in dealing with people with past convictions; Michigan’s referendum legalizing marijuana in November did not include a measure providing for expungement, for instance. In fact, people with past marijuana convictions can be barred from employment in marijuana businesses. Inequalities persist on the side of ownership as well: Marijuana sales are mostly benefiting white investors, according to a number of studies, and the hefty price of an initial investment is a barrier to lower-income Americans, who are disproportionately minorities. “You need to have at least a quarter of a million dollars lying around just to get started [with a marijuana dispensary],” Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Solomon Jones has written. “Since black families hold about $5.04 in wealth for every $100 held by white families, that’s not realistic for most of us.”

These issues are central to the legalization debates happening now in Connecticut, Illinois,  New Jersey, New Mexico, and New York. (While Vermont is the only state so far to have legalized marijuana legislatively, these states may do so in their current legislative session.)

I asked advocates in Connecticut, Illinois, and New Jersey what social and racial justice measures they think legalization should contain:

Kebra Smith-Bolden, president of the Connecticut United for Reform and Equity (CURE) and CEO of Canna-Health: “Number one is that all prisoners who currently have pending cannabis charges should have those dismissed and shouldn’t have to be on probation and parole, that there is no-cost expungement, and that there are tax incentives for businesses that hire ex-offenders. Equity in ownership: There should be opportunities for everyone, so we need to have requirements for diversity within the licensing process, and that has to be supported by the statistics of the communities that were overpoliced. … There can be less expensive modes of entry for all people to have the opportunity to enter this industry. We do believe that the licensing should be controlled on the municipal level. The city would be in control of the businesses that would come in the city and how the revenue would be poured back into the city. We believe that the reinvestment in the communities can come in a bunch of different forms, through education, rebuilding community centers, giving people the education on how to become businesses owners and how to engage in this new industry. … There needs to be finances available, through cannabis funds, to do marketing, to really be able to spread the word and to educate the community around the programs that are being created with the cannabis funds.” (See also: CURE has released a list of policy recommendations.)

Sharone Mitchell Jr., deputy director of the Illinois Justice Project: “I look at three components. I look at criminal record relief. We know that there are one million citizens in Illinois with criminal records, many of them for drug related issues or convictions, so having this bill include automatic expungement is key. Access to attorneys is difficult, it takes time to go to court, so when you make things expungeable you don’t get the group of people you’re targeting. [Asked what automaticity would involve, Mitchell responded: “It happens without me having to hire a lawyer and go to court, and pay money, and pay a fee. It means that the state is going to be declaring that those records are expungeable and does the work of expunging those records.”] The second piece is making sure that proceeds are shifted to communities that have been the setting for the war on drugs. … The third is inclusion in the industry. We know from our experience with medical marijuana that the rich got richer, and the folks that had a lot of access to capital were able to take advantage of that: We want to make sure that a more diverse set of people are benefiting from the industry, whether they be owners, whether they be people who are working in auxiliary industries like packaging or design.”

Roseanne Scotti, state director of the Drug Policy Alliance in New Jersey: “There are several pieces. One would be making sure that the portion of the tax revenue that is generated goes back to the communities that are most impacted by marijuana prohibition and mass incarceration. That could be through a grants program, or some other form of funding for programs that these communities find important, and we think that these communities should say what that would be. We would also like to see a very expedited path of expungement of records since in New Jersey African Americans are three times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession as white people. The burden disproportionately fell on that community, and we want to make sure that everyone who was harmed by that can get those records expunged quickly and for free. We would like to make sure that there is a clear path in the most impacted communities to get in the industry. One of the things that would do this is not barring people who have prior convictions in the community from entering the industry. … We would like to see things like: finding ways that a percentage of the licenses can go to members of communities of color, making sure that there are things like micro licenses so people who don’t have a large amount of capital have a path to get in the industry.”

Advocates in these states warn that it is not easy to get questions of equity on the table. “It’s definitely been a struggle,” Scotti said about the debate in New Jersey, though she added that “the narrative has shifted over time and the bill itself has changed.”

The legislative debate in New Jersey is further along than that of these other states since the session began in 2018. Demands like Scotti’s have been amplified by a group of mayors, including Ras Baraka of Newark and Steven Fulop of Jersey City, and by lawmakers like state Representative Jamel Holley, who told me that “[he “wouldn’t support legalization of marijuana if it didn’t include a strong social justice component.”

By contrast, I talked to Smith-Bolden on the same day that a bill legalizing marijuana was introduced in Connecticut’s House. Smith-Bolden criticized that bill’s content. “It’s saying that they will go forward with cannabis legalization with the already existing entities, which are all white-owned and you have to be a millionaire to be involved,” she said. “We plan on pulling out all the guns and we are connecting with other like-minded organizations and politicians. …  [Legalization] must include social justice reform and equity provisions for people of color and communities affected on the war on drugs. It must.”

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