The existence of these providers, authorized by a 2016 law, serves as a recognition by the state that promoting safer drug use can reduce one of the nation’s highest overdose mortality rates. Advocates for harm reduction have also warned lawmakers that this first step is far from adequate.

For one, the program has been embraced by leaders mostly in Maryland’s more urban counties, preserving barriers to safer drug use in rural areas. Even then, participants are only shielded from arrest and prosecution if they constantly carry a small card proving they’re registered in the program.

Otherwise, getting caught with a syringe or other tools to consume drugs in Maryland can lead to a felony charge and up to four years in prison; lesser paraphernalia charges can still carry hundreds of dollars in fines—not to mention collateral consequences associated with incarceration, court debt, and a criminal record. 

“We are calling it a health crisis on the one hand, but on the other we are treating it as a criminal offense,” Marguerite E. Lanaux, lead public defender in Baltimore, told Bolts. 

While over most of the past decade officials in Baltimore ruled out charging people for low-level drug offenses, the new state’s attorney rolled back those policies earlier this year, worrying local reformers about the future of prosecution in Maryland’s largest city.

Making people register with a government-sanctioned program to obtain safe supplies is no solution, said Harriet Smith, director of education and services at the Baltimore Harm Reduction Coalition, during her testimony at a statehouse hearing in February. “You can’t lose the card and you have to keep it on you at all times. You have to hope that the police officers in your area will trust that the code on the back of the card corresponds to you and not someone else,” Smith told state lawmakers. “I don’t know about y’all, but I lose business cards constantly—and I’m not experiencing homelessness. 

She added, “Requiring people to keep a tiny piece of paper and find it during a tense interaction with law enforcement interactions is unreasonable and a deterrent to taking part in this public health program.”

Smith and other harm reduction advocates had gathered at the state house to support House Bill 173, a proposal to lessen criminal penalties for drug paraphernalia. The bill proposes to cut maximum penalties for possession of “controlled paraphernalia”—defined in the bill as syringes, needles, gelatin capsules, glassine envelopes and various chemical agents meant to dilute or enhance drugs—down from four years to one, and from a $25,000 fine to a ceiling of $1,000. 

The bill also clarifies that such charges only apply to people manufacturing or selling drugs, as opposed to people who simply use them. However, Smith noted that the distinction is often blurry, since many who use drugs also sell them.

Sponsoring the paraphernalia bill is state Delegate David Moon, a Democrat and self-described civil libertarian who ran for office in part because he wanted to decriminalize drug use. Frustrated that in Maryland, and so much of the country, those working to treat substance use as a health issue and not a criminal one must settle for baby steps, Moon confesses that he believes his own bill doesn’t go far enough; he’d prefer total decriminalization of paraphernalia meant for drug use. 

“I need to get the votes to pass it,” Moon told Bolts. “Unraveling the drug war, unfortunately, does not move at the pace I would necessarily move at in our state.”

Even in more liberal states, people like Moon often find it painfully difficult to sell people in power on the concept of harm reduction, a broad set of strategies meant to help people who use drugs stay alive and as healthy as possible. Advocates say they don’t seek to enable drug use but rather to build a society more conducive to safety and addiction recovery.

The approach is backed by piles of research from all over the world: studies consistently show that providing safe drug-use supplies and safe places to consume drugs saves lives and prevents disease. Conversely, research shows that criminalization is ineffective—and in fact counterproductive—as a strategy to cut down on drug use and on overdose deaths.

“This is a health crisis. This is not a criminal justice or criminal legal crisis we’re in. Other countries get it and we just don’t,” Nicole Hanson-Mundell, who works on re-entry for formerly incarcerated people as executive director of the Maryland organization Out For Justice, told Bolts. “It’s incredibly harmful for this country and this state to continue this practice of incarceration as the only tool to teach a lesson or help someone understand or hand down a consequence. It’s really lazy policy.”

Smith said that in her experience, it’s not enough to present lawmakers with evidence of harm reduction’s public-health benefits.

“The lessons we grow up with, what we’re inculcated with in terms of the myths of drug use, those are just as strong as studies,” she said. 

Harm reduction has gained some traction in American halls of power and is even now endorsed by President Joe Biden, a leading architect of the country’s “war on drugs” while a U.S. senator. But groups working to make drug use safer remain chronically underfunded, and, as Moon has found, even the most modest legal reforms in this area can be heavy lifts.

Every state but Alaska criminalizes drug paraphernalia in some form. In a majority of U.S. states, life-saving fentanyl test strips remain illegal. (Maryland legalized them in 2018.)

Proposals to operate supervised drug-use sites have ignited political firestorms, even in some of the most progressive-leaning places in the country. Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom last year vetoed a bill to allow supervised drug injection sites, and a 2019 effort to legalize those sites in Colorado flamed out right after launching and is only now being rebooted. Advocates in Maryland are hoping these sites will one day be legalized in the state, but their political path is far from clear.

Even the paraphernalia policy Moon himself calls inadequate has been stalling for years in Maryland. In 2021, a similar bill made it all the way to the desk of then-Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican who had signed the earlier bills to legalize test strips and to set up the syringe services, but Hogan vetoed it because, he said, it was “dangerous” and would facilitate drug use and sales.

“I’m on year nine doing this crap,” said Moon, who was first elected in 2014. “People die, and we fail to reduce intravenous disease transmission.”

Though the bill is not as ambitious as Moon would like, many regard it as an important step. HB173 is endorsed by a wide range of public health groups, among others, and Moon is confident it’ll pass the legislature, as it did last time. (The bill cleared the House on March 2 and now sits in the Senate.) Unlike Governor Hogan, new Maryland Governor Wes Moore, a Democrat, has been outspoken in support of alternatives to incarceration, and would be expected to sign the bill into law.

Lanaux, the public defender in Baltimore, said policymakers evaluating HB173 should consider the way paraphernalia possession is actually charged. It leaves no question as to whom this statute is meant to target, she said.

“At the end of the day, if paraphernalia is the charge, the person being charged is a user, not a dealer,” Lanaux told Bolts. “Dealers are charged with more serious offenses. So, this is not addressing drug dealing. It is punishing users.”

Lanaux and other public defenders told Bolts they believe that people in rural areas will continue to face disproportionate hurdles to safe use, even if Moon’s bill passes. In addition to the fact that most safe-supply providers are in the more populous counties of Maryland, the crisis of overdose deaths is a relatively fresh one in rural and suburban areas of the state; substance-use deaths have tripled, or more, in many places that a decade ago suffered only a handful of them every year. 

Smith said HB173 plays an important part in reducing stigma around drug use, particularly in areas where the overdose crisis is relatively new.

“I think it will mean that people are much more likely to grab supplies for their loved ones,” she said.

Baltimore has long been home to a plurality of substance-use deaths in the state, but prosecutors lately haven’t been as hard on people dealing with addiction. The state’s attorney in Baltimore for the past eight years, Marilyn Mosby, had adopted a presumptive do-not-prosecute approach to low-level offenses such as paraphernalia possession. 

“If you go to some of the outer counties, the ones further out are always going to continue to prosecute” for paraphernalia as long as the option remains, said Joshua Speert, acting district public defender for two counties west of Baltimore. “Other counties didn’t stop charging small theft or drug possession just because Baltimore did.” 

Ivan Bates, the new lead prosecutor of Baltimore who ousted Mosby in the summer of 2022, has reversed her approach. He announced earlier this year that he was rescinding Mosby’s policies of declining to charge some low-level cases and would instead ramp up the prosecution of “quality-of-life offenses.”

Bates’s office did not respond to a request for comment on how it will approach paraphernalia cases going forward in light of its opposition to declination.

Moon and others wish the state would simply eliminate the option of prosecuting paraphernalia possession by people dealing with addiction issues, and thereby start to create some parity among counties’ respective approaches to drug use and treatment.

“If it can be charged,” Speert said, “it’s gonna be charged.”

The post Maryland Inches Forward on Harm Reduction to Fight Overdoses appeared first on Bolts.

But the tide turned on Tuesday, as Massachusetts voters approved giving people in the state driver’s licenses regardless of their immigration status. The referendum followed the adoption of a law earlier this year that expanded access to licenses; Republicans petitioned a veto referendum onto the ballot, and voters blessed the law this week.

“People are going to feel safer going on the roads, doing what Americans do—go to a doctor appointment, take children to school,” Reiter said. She works at the Brazilian Worker Center of Boston, an immigrants’ rights group that helped spearhead the Yes campaign.

The state’s immigrant advocates also cheered landmark wins this week in two counties where sheriff’s offices have long worked closely with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to identify and detain immigrants. Under such local arrangements, minor interactions, like traffic stops, can escalate into detainment and even deportation. 

Barnstable County, home to Cape Cod, stood out as the only county in New England to contract into ICE’s 287(g) program, which enables sheriff’s deputies to act like federal immigration agents. But voters on Tuesday elected a new sheriff who promises to “rip up” the county’s contract to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

“The sheriff’s office should not be doing ICE’s job,” Democratic nominee Donna Buckley, who will replace a retiring, 23-year Republican sheriff, told Bolts in September. Her GOP opponent favored maintaining the county’s contract with ICE.

In neighboring Bristol County, voters ousted Thomas Hodgson, a far-right sheriff with a history of draconian anti-immigrant policies. In 2017, Hodgson famously offered to send people detained in his custody to the U.S.-Mexico border to help build former President Donald Trump’s wall, and last year the federal government shut down his county’s immigrant detention facility over alleged civil rights violations.

Each of these changes was driven by on-the-ground organizing by immigrants’ rights activists in a state that tilts heavily Democratic but hasn’t always embraced immigrants in policy-making. Local groups like Bristol County for Correctional Justice and the Cape Cod Coalition for Safe Communities mounted active campaigns to educate voters in their counties about the stakes of these local elections. 

Elsewhere in the country, two GOP candidates with a history of championing harsher immigration enforcement failed to seize sheriff’s offices.

In Doña Ana County, a border county in New Mexico that is home to Las Cruces, Democratic Sheriff Kim Stewart easily prevailed over a Republican challenger who was advocating for a tighter relationship with federal agents. 

In Wake County (Raleigh), North Carolina, longtime sheriff Donnie Harrison failed in his comeback effort and lost to Democrat Willie Rowe. While in office, Harrison joined the 287(g) program and frequently demonized immigrants. He was ousted from office in 2018, alongside many other Republican sheriffs known for contracting with ICE who lost their reelection bids in North Carolina that year.

During his campaign, Harrison abruptly changed his stance on collaborating with ICE. When asked by Bolts in August about his public desire for Wake to rejoin 287(g), which his Democratic successor had quickly terminated, Harrison said he no longer wanted to. Advocates took his flip as a sign that protecting immigrants remains a potent issue.

Felicia Arriaga, a sociology professor at Appalachian State University, in western North Carolina, has compiled data showing that Harrison’s policies as sheriff contributed to hundreds of deportation a year; she says Harrison’s change this year was an electoralist effort to woo the center, and that his loss was met with relief by local organizers. Other North Carolina counties like Durham and Mecklenburg reelected Democratic sheriffs who came into office in 2018 and promptly limited ties with ICE.

North Carolina Republicans also failed to win veto-proof majorities in their legislature; that is likely to keep legislation they have championed to force sheriffs to work with ICE at bay for two more years, since the Democratic governor opposes it.

But at least one of the nation’s notorious anti-immigrant sheriffs survived on Tuesday in a more rural area. In Alamance, a North Carolina county roughly one hour west of Wake County, GOP Sheriff Terry Johnson won another term. He has faced federal accusations over racial profiling and for detaining immigrants in abusive conditions, and he reportedly once directed his deputies to discriminate against people who “appeared” to be Mexican, telling staff to “go out there and get me some taco-eaters.”

In Frederick County, Maryland, another mostly rural but rapidly-diversifying county north of D.C. Republican Sheriff Chuck Jenkins has a hefty lead as of publication, though many mail-in ballots, which lean heavily Democratic, remain to be counted. Jenkins has been under national scrutiny for policies that have ramped up fear among immigrants even as the county rapidly diversified under his tenure. Besides his connections to prominent national politicians and far-right groups, Jenkins has been a longstanding member of the 287(g) program and has been successfully sued over racial profiling in traffic stops.

“As an immigrant, you never really felt safe,” local resident Jesus Santiago told Bolts in September. He was once arrested in Frederick County over driving with a suspended license and then transferred into immigration detention; he was later shielded by former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. 

Democrats on Tuesday gained full control of the state government in Maryland for the first time in eight years and may look to pass more protections for immigrant residents. In recent years, they already passed bills curtailing local cooperation with ICE with enough votes to override the vetoes of outgoing Republican Governor Larry Hogan. 

“With the way Congress is, a lot of people are very focused on what they can do in their own states right now to try to improve the situation,” Sarang Sakhavat, political director at the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, told Bolts. “With Congress, we don’t really expect them to be changing much of anything.”

In Massachusetts, where Democrats also flipped the governorship and grabbed control of the government, advocates have been frustrated at the Democratic legislature’s failure to pass a bill limiting immigration enforcement; known as the Safe Communities Act, the reform was opposed by outgoing Republican Governor Charlie Baker. 

Massachusetts organizers who worked on various immigrant-rights campaigns this year also focused on making a public-safety argument.

The coalition that supported the Massachusetts driver’s license measure called itself “Yes on 4 For Safer Roads,” making the case that everyone is less safe when people are denied licenses because more driverspeople are uninsured. Similarly, opponents of county-level ICE partnerships are telling voters that communities are less safe if certain populations are disincentivized to interact with police and the legal system in general.

Working with ICE “doesn’t improve safety in any measurable way, and if anything it’s detrimental because it scares witnesses and victims away,” Sakhavat said.

Daniel Nichanian contributed to the reporting for this article.

The post Immigration Hardliners Lose Sheriff Races in Massachusetts and Beyond appeared first on Bolts.

Voters in Maryland and Missouri supported proposals to allow for the regulated sale of marijuana for non-medical purposes, joining 19 other U.S. states that have already done so. However, similar proposals in Arkansas, North Dakota and South Dakota all were shot down by comfortable margins.

Also, ten years to the week since Colorado and Oregon became the first two states to legalize recreational pot, Colorado voters are poised to approve a measure that removes criminal penalties for use, possession and home-grow of psilocybin (“magic mushrooms”) and some other psychoactive substances. Oregon went first on this front, passing a ballot measure decriminalizing those substances in 2020. 

“The more public dialogue there is on drug policy issues, the more sensible the policy outcomes are,” said Mason Tvert, a policy expert and industry advocate who co-directed Colorado’s landmark 2012 campaign to legalize non-medical cannabis use. 

“As we saw in North Dakota, South Dakota and Arkansas, there’s still a lot of work to be done. Most people alive right now have lived the vast majority of their lives in a world where cannabis was entirely illegal, and where they were hearing anti-cannabis propaganda. It’s not surprising that there are still voters with concerns. … But the writing’s on the wall.”

Underscoring Tvert’s point is the fact that even President Joe Biden, who has been a dedicated soldier in America’s war on drugs, is coming around. Last month he ordered a federal review of marijuana’s classification as a “Schedule 1” substance, defined as having “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” and he pardoned thousands of people convicted federally and in the District of Columbia for marijuana possession.

The marijuana map is diversifying rapidly in the U.S., as the issue is no longer a project only of progressive advocates for drug policy reform. Missouri, which approved its cannabis measure by six percentage points as of Wednesday morning, went for Donald Trump by at least 15 points in the 2020 presidential election. Maryland, which went for Biden by 33 points and approved its cannabis measure by about 30 points on Tuesday, was the bluest state in the country that had yet to legalize recreational marijuana.

The Missouri and Maryland measures were the only two of Tuesday’s five state-level marijuana initiatives to allow for record expungement by people previously convicted of marijuana-related activities that have now been legalized by voters. These states will now automatically expunge records for certain people, and make others fill out petitions. Missouri’s approach to prior convictions has been especially controversial, as some reformers fear it won’t be as effective in practice as on paper. The chair of the Legislative Black Caucus, plus some prominent cannabis advocates, came out against the ballot measure.

It’s relatively new that marijuana ballot measures would take this issue on at all. A decade ago, the reformist initiatives were focused squarely on the question of whether or not to legalize, and left questions of social equity, record expungement, banking and more for later on. 

“What’s happening now is there’s a far more detailed discussion taking place,” Tvert said. “There’s this growing sense that it’s inevitable that it will be legal, and so what should the details be?”

The two Dakotas took opposite paths to the same result this year. North Dakotans overwhelmingly rejected legal marijuana just four years ago, voting down a measure that, unlike this year’s, would have allowed for some record expungement. The previous North Dakota measure lost by 19 percentage points, while this year’s was losing by just 10 as of Wednesday morning. 

Fifty-four percent of South Dakota voters supported legal marijuana just two years ago, but after a lawsuit championed by Republican Governor Kristi Noem, who won reelection Tuesday, the state supreme court invalidated that measure. Given a chance to vote again on the issue, South Dakotans rejected it by a six-point margin.

The Arkansas measure looked little like the other four on the ballot this year, prohibiting home-grow of marijuana plants and placing a hard cap on cultivation and dispensary permits. More exclusive markets can perpetuate race and class disparity in who has access to the substance, and who is policed over it.

Market exclusivity was of chief concern to many who opposed Colorado’s ballot measure on psychedelics. Among these opponents were some of the organizers who pushed successfully for a 2019 Denver reform to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms. They argued this year’s statewide measure, which allows for sale of approved psychedelics only by licensed providers, will benefit a small group of profit-seeking interests. “It’s opening the floodgates for corporations to come to Colorado to open their bougie life and healing centers,” one advocate who worked on the 2019 effort told The Denver Post. 

The post Wins and Losses for State Referendums to Legalize Weed and Psychedelics appeared first on Bolts.

Five states are voting on legalizing recreational marijuana, and most are staunchly Republican. The issue has long drawn support across the political spectrum, and these elections will again test the sense of a growing national consensus against marijuana prohibition. 

Even President Biden, who was a dedicated soldier in America’s war on drugs while a senator, is coming around. Last week he ordered a federal review of marijuana’s classification as a “Schedule 1” substance, defined as having h “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse,” and he pardoned an estimated 6,500 people with federal convictions for marijuana possession, plus thousands more convicted in the District of Columbia.

The national debate over the war on drugs is also shifting past marijuana. Colorado, which helped launch the wave of weed legalization a decade ago, is now considering a measure that would legalize psychedelics, emulating a reform adopted by Oregon in 2020. 

Bolts looks at the six state referendums, plus some intriguing local measures, that may affect drug policy this fall. 

Most measures would establish new state-regulated systems for the sale of marijuana or, in the case of Colorado, psychedelics, likely bringing in considerable new revenue into public coffers. 

But there is wide variance as to how they would handle people who have already been convicted over behaviors that could soon become legal. A review by Bolts shows that only two of the five marijuana referendums would set up expungement of past criminal records, which considerably saddle a person’s access to jobs and housing.

Arkansas | Issue 4: On legalizing marijuana

Arkansas could become just the second state in the South, after Virginia, to legalize marijuana for recreational use and sales. Issue 4 qualified for the ballot after a petition drive organized by the group Responsible Growth Arkansas, just six years after another citizen-initiated measure legalized medical marijuana. A September poll found wide support for the measure.

But Issue 4 is also raising concerns about inequitable design. The Arkansas Advocate found that Arkansas would have the strictest rules among the 19 states that have legalized recreational marijuana: It would be the only one to both prohibit home-grow operations and keep a hard cap on cultivation and dispensary permits, which experts predict would limit supply and competition, leading to higher prices at retail stores. A more exclusive market could also perpetuate race and class disparity in who has access to the substance, and who is policed over it.

Moreover, unlike in some of the other states with marijuana measures this year, Issue 4 does not provide for wiping clean the criminal records of people already convicted over marijuana.

Republican lawmakers are angry that organizations are using the initiative route to champion issues that they oppose, including the 2016 medical marijuana vote. They have placed another measure on the ballot that would make it harder for ballot measures to pass in the future.

Missouri | Amendment 3: On legalizing marijuana

Just north of Arkansas, Missouri has also legalized marijuana for medical use, and may now do the same for recreational use. 

Amendment 3, which also qualified for the ballot through a petition drive organized by the group Legal Missouri, would end existing state prohibitions on the possession of marijuana, set up a regulated sales system by distributing licenses via a lottery system, and allow home growth. Polling shows a closely divided electorate. 

Missouri borders eight states, only one of which (Illinois) has legalized recreational marijuana. Based on the experience of other states, that would presage an influx of out-of-state customers looking to buy legal marijuana in Missouri. But this could also cause new legal problems as these customers would be breaking the law the second they crossed back into their home states, where marijuana possession may be punishable by jail time. This has been a long-documented problem for people traveling into Kansas with weed from Colorado.

The Missouri amendment creates a path for people with marijuana convictions to expunge their records. But many marijuana advocates believe the ballot measure does not go far enough and are raising alarms. They stress that some people would be excluded from automatic expungement due to carve-outs or because they’re still serving time; they also note that the initiative would keep in place some criminal penalties, including for smoking marijuana in public. The chair of Missouri’s Legislative Black Caucus opposes Amendment 3 on these grounds. Organizations that support criminal justice reforms such as ACLU of Missouri and the Missouri Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, are supporting it.

Maryland | Question 4: On legalizing marijuana

Going off of the results of the last presidential election, Maryland is the bluest state in the country that has yet to legalize marijuana. Question 4 would end that distinction and legalize the possession and retail sale of marijuana.

Maryland lawmakers placed it on the ballot as a constitutional amendment that does not need the governor’s signature. (Republican Governor Larry Hogan has vetoed bills related to marijuana in the past.) Lawmakers also passed implementing legislation earlier this year (House Bill 837) that would be triggered by the passage of Question 4; Hogan allowed the bill to become law without his signature. 

The legislation would automatically expunge the records of people who have been convicted of offenses that would be newly legal under the law. It would allow people who are presently incarcerated for marijuana possession to petition for immediate release. 

If Question 4 passes, lawmakers would still have a lot of blanks to fill in the next session, as HB 837 did not flesh out the regulatory details of marijuana sales. Progressive advocates and lawmakers have already signaled that building an equitable retail system is a prime concern and that they want dispensary licenses and tax revenue to be distributed in a way that helps the Black communities that have been disproportionately affected by the prohibition of marijuana. A report released by the Baltimore prosecutor’s office in 2019 found that Black residents of Baltimore were six times likelier than white residents to be cited for marijuana possession. 

North Dakota | Measure 2: On legalizing marijuana

North Dakotans overwhelmingly rejected a measure to legalize marijuana just four years ago. But proponents of legalization are hoping for a different outcome by highlighting a broad alliance: Measure 2 qualified after a petition drive organized by a coalition called New Approach ND, whose chair is a member of the Libertarian Party and whose treasurer is a police officer-turned-defense attorney. The measure’s sponsoring committee features lawmakers from both parties. 

The Republican-run state House already passed a legalization bill in 2021, though the bill later died in the Senate. Measure 2 picks up where that bill left off: It would legalize the possession and sale of marijuana, and also allow home growth of up to three plants.

The measure would leave a lot of regulatory rulemaking for the legislature to take care of, but it does stipulate that only 18 retail licenses would be granted to start. That may limit the circulation of marijuana in a very vast, if sparsely populated, state. 

Measure 2 would not allow for expungement of criminal records, unlike the 2018 measure that provided for automatic expungement. 

South Dakota | Measure 27: On legalizing marijuana

South Dakotans already said what they think about marijuana in 2020: 54 percent of voters approved a ballot measure to legalize its recreational use. But after a lawsuit championed by Republican Governor Kristi Noem, that measure was invalidated by the South Dakota Supreme Court the following year for breaching the state’s requirement that initiatives only pertain to one subject.

Advocates returned this year with a drive to qualify a new proposal for the ballot. Measure 27 takes a simpler approach than the 2020 initiative. It would not change the state constitution, for one. It would allow for the purchase and possession of marijuana, plus home-grows of up to three plants for personal use, but it would leave questions of taxation and regulatory structure to the state legislature.

And it would not set up a process for people to expunge their past convictions.

The marijuana debate has seeped into the governor’s race, as Democratic nominee Jamie Smith has denounced Noem’s efforts to overturn the 2020 initiative. Another South Dakota election that touches on drug policy is the ballot measure to expand Medicaid access to tens of thousands of people; enhanced health insurance can improve paths to treatment over substance use issues that are otherwise funneled into jail, which played a role in other recent referendums over Medicaid. 

Colorado | Proposition 122: On legalizing psychedelics

With Proposition 122, a voter-initiated measure once known as Initiative 58, Colorado may add to a new trend: Building off of a 2019 ballot measure in Denver, and a 2020 ballot measure in Oregon, the measure would remove criminal penalties for use, possession and home-grow of psilocybin (commonly known as “magic mushrooms”) and some other psychoactive substances. 

It would also set up a legally regulated system for state-regulated providers to sell psychedelics for a range of treatment and therapeutic purposes. 

Denver, the state’s capital city, did a version of this, and a government review panel that included law enforcement found no resulting threats to public safety. Some of the organizers of the Denver reform are now opposing  Initiative 58 because they fear the measure would specifically benefit a small handful of profit-seeking interests. “It’s opening the floodgates for corporations to come to Colorado to open their bougie life and healing centers,”  one advocate who worked on Denver’s decriminalization effort told The Denver Post. 

Local elections matter to drug policy, too

Under the hood of state statutes and prohibitions, localities retain vast powers to decide how aggressively to pursue the war on drugs. That, too, is at stake this year all around the country.

Colorado, for instance, is a home-rule state, meaning that towns and counties still have the authority to ban the sale of marijuana. Colorado Springs, the state’s second-largest city and the anchor of a historically arch-conservative region, has long resisted legal weed; residents cannot purchase it within the city, which misses out on all the local sales tax that other municipalities get to collect. Colorado Springs voters this year will decide Questions 300 and 301, which would enable recreational marijuana sales and tax them.

In Texas, where marijuana is illegal but where some liberal-leaning cities have asked the police to not enforce the statute, some towns like Killeen will weigh in on decriminalizing marijuana. 

And the war on drugs is also on the ballot in many elections for the law enforcement offices that have the power to make arrests or press charges over drugs—or refuse to do so. In many places, the debate still revolves around marijuana. The Democratic incumbent in Indiana’s Marion County (Indianapolis), for instance, has stopped prosecuting low-level possession but his Republican challenger is taking issue with that. “I do not want Indianapolis to become a San Francisco, to become a New York City, to become a Los Angeles,” she said at a recent forum.

Other candidates are promising to at the very least avoid jail time over drug offenses. And some reformers want to go further and keep the criminal legal system out altogether. Rahsaan Hall, running for prosecutor in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, says he won’t prosecute drug possession. “Those are not law enforcement issues,” Caitlin Sepeda, a nurse who narrowly lost the primary for sheriff in another Massachusett county in September, told Bolts last month. “Those are nursing issues. Those are social service issues.”

The post Six States Are Voting on Legalizing Weed or Psychedelics 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.

Update: Sheriff Chuck Jenkins prevailed in the Nov. 8, 2022 election.

Jesus Santiago remembers when La Chiquita Grocery was the only place nearby he and his family could go for the hard-to-find ingredients that are staples of cuisine from their native Mexico. When he first moved to Frederick County, Maryland, as a child in 2002, it was an overwhelmingly white county known for its strong conservative leanings. Speaking Spanish in public often brought stares and there weren’t many kids who looked like him in school. 

Over time, things changed. The Latinx population in Frederick County grew nearly seven-fold from 2000 to 2020, driven largely by job opportunities in the area and low housing costs, and more and more stores like La Chiquita popped up around town; the share of the white population, which sat at 90 percent in 2000, is now below 70 percent. But there was always one constant: “As an immigrant,” Santiago says, “you never really felt safe.”

The rapid demographic changes were met with hostility by local officials. The county declared English to be its official language in 2012 to deter immigrants from coming. Members of the county’s board of commissioners pushed to block landlords from renting to undocumented people and require businesses to verify the immigration status of their workers. Commissioners even attempted to get local public schools to report on which students were undocumented. 

These efforts were all designed to make daily life difficult for immigrant communities. But the local sheriff’s department, which has been led since 2006 by Republican Sheriff Chuck Jenkins, went furthest in declaring war on people like Santiago. 

In December 2010, while driving home from work, Santiago noticed a police car following him. It kept behind several minutes before pulling him over for purportedly crossing a solid road line. Santiago had heard stories of immigrants like him in the community getting stopped for petty reasons before being detained. Now, it was his turn.

Santiago was arrested for driving on a suspended license and taken to the station, where officers ran his fingerprints. Upon discovering his undocumented status, Frederick County police immediately contacted federal agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and put Santiago in a cell block reserved for immigrants facing deportation. Santiago spent Christmas and New Years behind bars. Forty-two days went by before he managed to convince an immigration judge to lower his bail to an amount his family could afford to pay; on the 43rd day, he posted bail and was released to his family while his case was processed.

Sanitago’s story is no outlier. Under Jenkins, Frederick County became home to one of the most draconian anti-immigrant local law enforcement regimes in the country. Working hand-in-hand with ICE, Jenkins’ police force deported more than 1,500 immigrants and detained countless more. The sheriff has ridden his anti-immigrant platform to the summit of small-town stardom, becoming a darling of Fox News and making an appearance at political gatherings held at the White House by former President Donald Trump and later at his Mar-a-Lago beach home. But that joyride might soon come to an end. 

Jenkins is up for reelection in November, and immigrants’ rights advocates hope this is the moment their longstanding efforts to reverse local policies finally pay off. 

Jenkins faces Democrat Karl Bickel, a former sheriff’s deputy and a retired policing analyst at the Department of Justice, who says he would curtail the sheriff’s department’s relationship with ICE if he wins.

“It’s just not the place of local law enforcement to get involved in immigration enforcement,” Bickel, who has met with Santiago and other affected immigrants during his campaigns, told Bolts. “It’s time to start the hard work of rebuilding trust with the immigrant community.”

The central pillar of Jenkins’ immigration policies is a special agreement made with ICE known as 287(g). Under 287(g), sheriff’s deputies are empowered to act like federal immigration agents within their county jail; when someone is booked in jail for whatever reason, it allows deputies to inquire about their immigration status and to keep those who can’t prove their immigration status locked up when they’d otherwise be freed until ICE collects them. It’s why Frederick County police were able to keep Santiago detained for so long for a misdemeanor offense. 

Supporters of 287(g) like Jenkins claim the program is a necessary public safety tool for tackling serious crime. The available data for 287(g) arrests, both nationally and for Frederick County, contradict Jenkins’ assurances and show that it is frequently used against people arrested over minor infractions. Immigrants rights advocates criticize the program on the grounds that local law enforcement weaponizes it against immigrants and other people of color, targeting people after booking them over offenses like traffic violations. 

“It leads to a real destruction of community trust towards law enforcement,” says Viviana Westbrook of the Catholic Immigration Network. Westbrook says she’s represented clients in Frederick County who have been mugged or assaulted but refused to call the police. 

“Undocumented people are afraid that reporting a crime will cause them more danger than the actual crime they’ve been a victim to,” Westbrook adds.

Bickel, Jenkins’s challenger, echoes that criticism of the program. In an interview with Bolts, he committed to ending the county’s 287(g) contract.

Bickel also said he would curb other forms of cooperation with ICE and would reject detainers—requests from ICE, which do not include a criminal warrant signed by a judge, that a jail keep detaining someone past their release date. But Bickel left the door open to sharing information with the federal agency in cases involving detained individuals who committed higher-level crimes such as homicide or assault of any kind. In such cases, the sheriff’s department would still not detain the individual on behalf of ICE, Bickel said, but would contact the agency to inform them that the individual has been released.  

Only a small share of counties nationwide are part of the 287(g) program, including Frederick and two of Maryland’s 22 other counties. 

And Frederick is one of just a handful of 287(g) counties nationwide that voted for Joe Biden over Trump in 2020 and have local elections this year. This marks Frederick among the 2022 midterms’ critical battlegrounds for local immigration policy, alongside counties dispersed around the country such as Barnstable in Massachusetts, and Wake in North Carolina. 

Still, the number of jurisdictions nationwide participating in 287(g) more than tripled between 2016 and 2020, thanks to a concerted effort by the Trump administration to promote the program. The common factor among new participants, law professor Alina Das writes in her book No Justice in the Shadows, was not a high crime rate, but rather a change in demographics. According to Das, nearly 90 percent of jurisdictions signing up had seen growth in their Latinx population above the national average in recent years. These were the same dynamics at play in Frederick County when Jenkins came into power. 

Jenkins was first elected in 2006 on the back of a campaign demonizing immigrants. According to a legal brief by the ACLU of Maryland, Jenkins claimed that “the immigration problem” was the nation’s “single biggest threat”—one that he intended to solve and “shoot them right back” out of Frederick County. It didn’t take long for local advocates to question whether the sheriff’s devotion to the 287(g) program was grounded in crime prevention or just thinly veiled racism. 

Former president of the Frederick County NAACP chapter Guy Djoken thinks back with dismay on his first time meeting Jenkins. He and representatives from immigrant advocacy group CASAand from the state’s ACLU chapter gathered in Jenkin’s office in 2008 to make the case that 287(g) was not an effective tool for fighting crime. As they finished their presentation, Jenkins asked if he could show them something before leaving. The sheriff turned to his computer screen which lit up with a video from immigration restrictionist group NumbersUSA. In the video, a presenter stands before an enormous container of colorful gumballs meant to represent the billions of poor people living in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, arguing that immigration levels to the U.S. should be cut. 

“We couldn’t believe our eyes. This wasn’t about stopping crime at all. It was about getting immigrants out of America,” Djoken, who led the Frederick County chapter of the civil rights organization from 2004 to 2016, told Bolts. “We realized then that there was no hope for education or cooperation. We needed to fight back.”

Jenkins did not respond to an interview request or questions before the publication of this article. He responded after this article was published. On a call with Bolts, Jenkins said he stood by 287(g) and his past comments on the program. He said he did not believe the program had negatively affected any trust between his department and Frederick County’s immigrant community. Regarding the NumbersUSA video, Jenkins said he played the video that day to “show where we were headed as a country,” mentioning millions of “illegals” and unsustainable immigration levels.

Throughout his tenure, Jenkins has associated with other organizations that advocate for harsher immigration policies, such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). FAIR, which shares a founder with NumbersUSA, the white supremacist and eugenicist John Tanton, funded a trip to the southern border with Mexico for Jenkins and seven other sheriffs in 2014. FAIR also works with another far-right group, Help Save Maryland, which partnered with Jenkins to set up a statewide tour to promote 287(g). Both FAIR and Help Save Maryland have both been labeled as ‘hate groups’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Jenkins is also involved with far-right groups Protect America Now and Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association. Both groups, which boast hundreds of members between them, have actively promoted conspiracies around the 2020 election and sit at the center of a network of organizations working to police future elections. Their strategy is to use baseless claims of voter fraud to empower sheriffs to monitor ballot drop boxes and poll locations—tactics that democracy advocates warn will be used to intimidate voters, particularly voters of color. 

In the years following Djoken’s 2008 meeting with Jenkins, local progressive, civil rights, and immigrant advocacy groups coalesced against the county’s 287(g) program and the sheriff’s extremism. But as pressing as these issues were, Frederick County leaned conservative and remained roughly 80 percent white, and convincing residents to care would take time.  

Jenkins would cruise to reelection in his next two campaigns, including beating Bickel in 2014 by 25 points. Bickel sought a rematch in 2018, and cut the margin to just four points. He is now running for the third time.

Among the major difference makers in that tight, 2018 election were the organizers with groups like Safe Haven Frederick, ACLU of Maryland, and the RISE Coalition of Western Maryland who worked to capitalize on the anger at Trump’s immigration policies to remind voters that their sheriff was working closely with ICE. (Similar activism elsewhere that year succeeded at ousting other longtime sheriffs with ties to ICE.) Organizers staged several protests against the county’s participation in the 287(g) program, in addition to pro-immigrant rallies and events. Their efforts centered the voices of affected local residents like Roxana Orellana Santos and Sara Medrano, two Latina women who have successfully sued Jenkins’s office for racial profiling after they were wrongfully arrested while going about their day. 

The county has shifted bluer since. Biden’s 10-point win over Trump marked the first time a Democratic presidential candidate carried Frederick County since 1964. In 2021, Democrats used their new majority on the county council to create the first Immigrant Affairs Commission, a body meant to facilitate communication between immigrants and elected officials. 

“When people face a common challenge, it brings them together,” says Djoken, who attributes many of the recent transformations in Frederick County to the coalitions built in response to its 287(g) agreement. 

Meanwhile, on a statewide level, Maryland Democrats who run the state legislature have moved against local anti-immigrant ordinances. In December, the legislature overrode vetoes from Republican Governor Larry Hogan to adopt a law banning local jails from being paid by federal agencies to detain undocumented people and a law banning state officials from sharing driver’s records and facial recognition data with federal immigration agents. 

Jenkins’s critics believe that conditions are in place for the sheriff to lose in a still-diversifying Frederick County, from the local backlash to Trump to this statewide move to be more welcoming to immigrants. And they intend to keep reminding people of his policies.

Santiago, who was brought by his parents to the U.S. when he was seven years old, was eventually protected from deportation in 2012 when then-President Barack Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. But the threat 287(g) poses to other immigrants like him, including his own family, is on his mind.

“It scares me because my dad drives everyday and he’s undocumented,” he said. “There are times when he and my mom leave the house and I won’t hear from them for a few hours. I get worried. Did something bad happen? Did they get stopped?”

If Frederick County were to quit 287(g), Santiago added, “I’d be able to sleep better at night knowing my mom and dad won’t get pulled over by somebody racist and get detained.”

The article has been updated with comment from Jenkins.

The post “You Never Really Felt Safe”: Resistance to Far-Right Maryland Sheriff Builds in Election Lead-Up appeared first on Bolts.

Baltimore police fired a hail of 44 bullets at Keith Davis in June 2015, striking him three times. Keith survived, but he has since been tried five times over the events of that day. After he was acquitted of robbery but found guilty of illegal gun possession in 2016, the local prosecutor’s office added murder charges and has relentlessly tried to convict him ever since. Two convictions were overturned due to allegations of prosecutorial misconduct; two other trials resulted in a hung jury. Still, prosecutors under Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby indicated they were planning yet another trial—a fifth over the same allegations—which according to at least one legal observer would be nearly unprecedented. 

Since her husband’s arrest in 2015, Kelly has been his most vocal and tireless advocate, pitting her against Mosby, who sought a third term in last week’s election.

“Keith is the most aggressively prosecuted man in American history,” she told Bolts. “We have a city full of murders and Keith faces a continuous cycle of malicious prosecution.” A judge ruled in June that Mosby’s continued prosecution of Keith Davis was driven by “personal animosity.” 

Mosby’s campaign was plagued by other major legal woes, including a federal grand jury that indicted her earlier this year on multiple perjury charges over false statements she allegedly made related to her purchase of two vacation homes. Prosecutors have accused Mosby of lying to lenders to receive more favorable mortgage terms. Mosby said the charges were politically motivated and launched a re-election bid anyway. 

In the run-up to the city’s July 19 elections, Kelly publicly backed Ivan Bates, the only candidate challenging Mosby in the Democratic primary who said he would drop the charges against Davis if elected. She even campaigned for Bates on Election Day alongside other members of “Team Keith,” a group of supporters who have waged an aggressive grassroots campaign to raise awareness of his case.

“Having so many people come to the polls that were familiar with Keith’s story … come out and say, ‘Hey, I voted for Bates,’ was a good feeling,” she told Bolts.

Bates defeated Mosby last week, grabbing the Democratic nomination by a comfortable margin of 41 to 29 percent over the incumbent. Another challenger, Thiru Vignarajah, received 30 percent. Bates will be unopposed in the general election, which makes him the city’s presumptive next prosecutor.

Since his win, Bates says he is now subject to a gag order, which Mosby has been accused of violating, that prevents him from making additional comments on what he’ll do with Keith Davis, but he told Bolts he stands by his previous statements.  

“Ethically I can no longer talk about that because I’m no longer, quote unquote, a private citizen, but I can say, the way I felt then is still and will always be the way that I felt. I still feel that way,” he told Bolts. “My word is very important to me.”

Beyond his position on Davis’s case, Bates largely anchored his campaign on talk of ramping up prosecutions—criticizing Mosby for being too lenient on crime at a time of rising murders. Gun violence has increased around the nation but is especially high in Baltimore, and Bates has vowed to seek lengthy prison terms for illegal gun possession.

He has also said he would increase prosecution and penalties for the kind of lower-level cases that decreased significantly under Mosby, such as drug possession, prostitution and loitering.

Mosby took part in national networks of so-called progressive prosecutors, and she implemented a series of criminal justice reforms over her two terms. She engaged in reviews of old sentences, stopped prosecuting canabis possession, and during the pandemic she stopped charging low-level offenses like drug possession and prostitution. 

Mosby rose to national prominence in 2015 for charging six Baltimore police officers over the death of 25 year old Freddie Gray in police custody but she was unable to secure a conviction in that case. Mosby’s opponents have blamed her for ongoing high murder and crime rates that have plagued the city—a critique she herself deployed against her opponent Gregg Bernstein in the 2014 election. Vignarajah accused her of turning Baltimore into a “crime scene” and campaigned more aggressively than Bates on rolling back her reforms; he was endorsed by Larry Hogan, the GOP governor who regularly clashed with Mosby. He finished narrowly ahead of Mosby but more than than 10 percentage points behind Bates. 

Kelly Davis and some other local activists reject the notion that Mosby is progressive. Davis cites the ongoing prosecution of her husband, as well as reports that Black residents are still greatly overrepresented in cases that Mosby’s prosecutors bring to court. During the first six months of this year, city prosecutors requested that defendants be held without bail as they await trial, a process that often takes months, in over three out of every four cases observed by the group Baltimore Court Watch.

Data also indicates that arrests for some low level offenses such as drug possession, minor traffic violations and prostituion dropped significantly after Mosby stopped prosecuting those cases in March 2020. A 2021 Johns Hopkins study, commissioned by Mosby, found that police made 443 fewer arrests in the 14 subsequent months. While the report does not establish causality, it did find that the decrease in arrests did not pose threats to public safety, and the majority of the averted arrests were of African Americans.

Bates argues that Mosby’s policies of not prosecuting some offenses has fueled crime and caused confusion; during an interview, he mentioned a former client arrested with multiple pounds of cannabis telling him he thought that Mosby had legalized drug dealing.

Bates says he’ll resume prosecuting arrests for lower-level infractions such as drug possession. He said this not for the sake of punishing people. He argued that arrests give officials the opportunity to connect people with treatment and support, offering the example of police “engaging” a sex worker “to find out this person is being sex-trafficed and if they are, given the resources and the services that they need.” 

Marguerite Lanaux, Baltimore’s top public defender, believes in alternative approaches that look to reduce the scope of the criminal legal system.

“Where you’re talking about treatment and treatment services, those things can occur without being justice-involved,” she told Bolts. She hopes that the city’s next prosecutor will reject the “immediate, feel good approach that more incarceration somehow leads to lower crime rates.”

Robbie Leonard, a defense attorney in neighboring Baltimore County, shares Lanaux’s analysis.

“There are other ways of providing services to people outside the court system,” he told Bolts. “And sometimes that’s hard for an attorney that’s only practiced criminal law to think outside courts, police, outside of arrests, and judges, but it can be done.”

Leonard also cautioned Bates against reflexively undoing policies that have proven effective, noting the mounting evidence that incarceration does not reduce recidivism or bolster public safety over the long term.

But Bates has said he’ll seek lengthy prison terms for gun possession. “If you’re a violent offender and you’re carrying an illegal handgun, we’ll be invoking the five-year minimum mandatory sentencing,” he told Bolts. There have long been heated debates in Maryland over whether to eliminate or strengthen mandatory minimum sentencing, which critics stress balloon prisons and pressure defendants into guilty pleas to avoid the harshest charges. Bates defends their deterrent effect. “I never enjoy sending people to jail,” he said. ”However I also can no longer stand by when we have so many funerals of young people in the city.”

Leonard, who is a former public defender, ran for prosecutor himself this summer in Baltimore County. (The county does not include the city of Baltimore.) He challenged State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger, a fierce opponent of police and criminal justice reform. This was Shellenberger’s first primary challenge since he took office in 2006. 

As of publication, some votes remain to be counted and the local press has yet to call the race, but Shellenberger leads 51 to 49 percent and appears to be the likely winner. Leonard told Bolts he is heartened by the results because it shows that there’s a path to victory for a reform candidate in the county, which has the reputation for being more conservative than the city.

Shellenberger is set to stand trial later this year over his office’s handling of sexual assualt cases, something Leonard says motivated him to run. The Daily Record reported on Thursday that Shellenberger told his staff he would take a leave of absence from his office, citing exhaustion. GOP nominee James Haynes awaits the Democratic nominee in November.

Three other prosecutors lost elsewhere in Maryland, all in Republican primaries. Saint Mary’s County’s Richard Fritz lost to Jaymi Sterling, a former employee of the office who is also the daughter of the current governor; Hartford County’s Albert Peisinger lost to Alison Healey, who benefited from heavy support from a local police union; and Lisa Thayer Welch ousted incumbent Justin Gregory in Garrett, a smaller county.

See: The full list of candidates running for prosecutor in Maryland.

None of these new GOP nominees will face an opponent in November; in total, all but three of Maryland’s 24 prosecutor races are now resolved.

Baltimore City was meant to have a contested general election as well but Roya Hanna, a defense attorney running as an independent who has also proposed rolling back some of Mosby’s reforms, announced on July 29 that he would drop out and endorse Bates, effectively sealing Bates’s victory.  

Bates gained prominence for working as the defense attorney for Alicia White, one of six officers charged by Mosby over Gray’s death in police custody, and in 2018 for his role in exposing the Gun Trace Task Force, a group of corrupt Baltimore cops convicted of crimes ranging from robbery, extortion and overtime fraud.

For the city’s next state’s attorney, one of the first decisions will be how to handle the prosecution of Keith Davis. A court hearing scheduled for August will decide the date of the new trial sought by Mosby; if the trial goes forward, it would be his sixth.

Leonard praised Bates for his criticism of Mosby’s handling of the case. “Not prosecuting Davis is very important,” he said. He also hopes that Bates will not pursue a total break from some of the incumbent’s reforms. “He really needs to think about some of the policies Marilyn Mosby had that were successful, implement them, modify them—don’t eliminate them because they were implemented by someone he had to beat.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated Jaymi Sterling’s relationship to Governor Hogan.

The article was updated on July 29 to reflect Roya Hanna’s decision to drop out from the general election.

The post Baltimore Ousts Its Embattled Prosecutor, Reshuffling Local Criminal Justice Policy appeared first on Bolts.

Maryland has banned life without the possibility of parole for people convicted of crimes that occurred when they were children. On Saturday, the Democratic-run legislature overrode Republican Governor Larry Hogan’s veto of the legislation.

Maryland is the 25th state, in addition to Washington, D.C., to bar these sentences. With the vote, hundreds of people will have an opportunity for earlier release. 

“I had anticipated that Governor Larry Hogan would veto the bill but had full confidence that the Maryland General Assembly would do the right thing,” said Fatima Razi, co-founder and executive director of the Maryland Juvenile Justice Coalition. “This body of legislators has brought me closer to restoring my faith in Maryland’s justice system.”

The legislation, Senate Bill 494, known as the Juvenile Restoration Act, applies retroactively. It allows anyone who has served at least 20 years for a crime that occured when they were a minor to petition the court for a sentence reduction, including if they were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. The court then must hold a hearing where a judge should consider a number of factors, including the offense, evidence of rehabilitation, childhood trauma, and victim statements. A person whose petition is denied can request a hearing two more times, three years apart.

In Maryland, nearly 50 people were serving a juvenile life without the possibility of parole sentence as of December, but the law’s impact extends to hundreds of others who were sentenced to lengthy prison terms or life with parole. More than 300 people, who were not sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, will be immediately eligible for resentencing because they have already served more than 20 years for offenses that occurred when they were children, according to the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth. 

Of the more than 400 people immediately eligible for resentencing, over 85 percent are Black, according to the campaign. 

In Maryland, the overwhelming majority of children tried as adults are Black, according to the state’s racial impact analysis of SB 494. From July to December 2019, more than 80 percent of the 459 children charged as adults were Black. 

The growing movement against police violence and white supremacy in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis helped spur the passing of SB 494, say its supporters.

“As instances of police brutality have come to the fore of mainstream consciousness, the nation is reckoning with a reality that impacted communities have known all along—there is a throughline from slavery to our current-day criminal justice system,” said Erica Suter, a post-conviction appellate attorney and first vice president of the Maryland Criminal Defense Attorneys’ Association. “I think we have reached a boiling point where none of us have the luxury of looking away any longer.”

A diverse coalition, including victims’ family members and State’s Attorneys Marilyn Mosby and Aisha Braveboy, supported SB 494, which passed with bipartisan support. But their colleagues were some of its most vocal opponents. Hogan’s veto message listed 14 state’s attorneys, including Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger, who urged him to veto SB 494. He did not mention Mosby or Braveboy, who represent two of the state’s most populous regions, Baltimore City and Prince George’s County. 

But those who petition for sentence reductions could still spend the rest of their lives in prison, said Suter. The bill does not guarantee release for people convicted of crimes that occurred when they were under the age of 18. 

“[SB 494] gives hope and an opportunity to a huge population in our prisons,” said Suter. The bill, she said, does not go far enough. 

“Unfortunately there are some judges in some jurisdictions who are not, who I’m afraid will not, be persuaded,” she said, “no matter how many good things someone has done.”  

—

The United States is the only known country that sentences children to life without the possibility of parole, according to the Sentencing Project. At the start of 2020, approximately 1,400 people were serving life without the possibility of parole for crimes that occurred when they were children. But more states are rejecting this practice. 

“We’ve fortunately seen this dramatic national trend away from life without the possibility of parole for kids and other very extreme sentences,” said Preston Shipp, a former prosecutor who is now senior policy counsel with the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth. “This is not a partisan issue, it’s a moral issue.” 

In 2012, the Supreme Court banned mandatory juvenile life without the possibility of parole sentences. About four years later, the court made that decision apply retroactively, which meant about 2,000 people who had been automatically sentenced to life without the possibility of parole could receive resentencing or parole hearings.

Since then, many states have chosen to abolish these sentences altogether. In January, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, signed legislation that provides an opportunity for parole after a certain number of years served for those convicted of crimes that occurred when they were children. Similar legislation passed last year in Democratic-run Virginia. 

On Thursday, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, issued an executive order that establishes a clemency board to review petitions from those who have served at least 20 years for crimes committed when they were minors. 

But more work is needed to ensure children, as well as young adults, do not spend decades in prison, say youth justice advocates. 

The Supreme Court’s 2012 decision was based, in part, on research that shows the adolescent brain is “not yet fully mature in regions and systems related to … impulse control, planning ahead, and risk avoidance,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the majority, quoting from an amicus brief filed by the American Psychological Association.

These traits do not end on a person’s 18th birthday. Research has shown the brain keeps developing until a person is in their mid-20s. Recognizing this, Washington, D.C., approved a law in January that will allow people serving life sentences to file for a sentence reduction for offenses that occurred before they were 25. Previously, this consideration was only extended to people convicted as minors. (Congress has the power to block laws passed by D.C., so the law will not be enacted until later this spring after a waiting period passes; Congress is not expected to intervene.) 

Other states, including Illinois and Washington, have also created pathways for the early release of people who were convicted as young adults. The Maryland Court of Appeals is now considering a rules change to permit some people who were under 25 at the time of the crime to petition for a sentence modification after serving 15 years. 

“There’s really no reason to draw the line arbitrarily at 18,” said Riya Saha Shah, managing director of Juvenile Law Center.

Warren Hynson, who spent more than 25 years incarcerated in Maryland, told The Appeal he was held with other men who, like him, arrived in prison in their mid to late teens. They should be given a chance, like he was, to return home and succeed, he said. “It’s devastating for a human being to feel that he or she has no hope,” said Hynson. Suter represented Hynson during his parole process. 

In 1992, when Hynson was 17, he was sentenced to natural life, with the possibility of parole, for felony murder. When the judge sentenced him, he assumed he would be home in five years. Hynson only began to understand his sentence when he got to prison. 

“I felt, man, this is where I’m going to die.” he said. “I started meeting dudes, that’s older, with gray hair, gray in their beards. And they said they’ve been locked up since they were 15, 16 years old.”

While incarcerated, Hynson said he was a youth mentor, attended classes, and worked on his art, even having his pieces exhibited at a local college. In 2001, he was resentenced to life suspended and 43 years. In 2016, the parole commission recommended him for parole, but Governor Hogan denied it. Hynson went home in 2019, when he was 45 years old. 

Hynson and his fiance now live minutes from his mother’s home in Maryland. After he gets home from work, he creates art, and intends to exhibit at future shows. 

“People do change, people do grow, people do evolve into better human beings,” said Hynson. “Don’t throw us in prison and throw away the key. Don’t throw us in prison and not give us any tools to grow.”

Disclosure: Juvenile Law Center and the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth were sponsors of Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg’s interview-based play on juvenile life without parole, “Life, Death, Life Again: Children Sentenced to Die in Prison.”

The post Maryland Bans Sentencing Children to Life Without Parole appeared first on Bolts.

This article is part of The Stakeholders, a Political Report series of Q&As with state and local actors on the criminal legal system.

The sudden resignation of a powerful Maryland senator who chaired a committee in charge of the criminal legal system is shuffling the politics of mass incarceration in Maryland. His replacement as chair by a more progressive lawmaker may make criminal justice reform more viable.

Bobby Zirkin, the outgoing chair of the Senate’s Judicial Proceedings Committee, is a moderate Democrat who championed conventionally tough-on-crime policies such as mandatory minimums and resisted reforms such as restrictions on cash bail. William Smith, the Democrat who is taking over as chair, says he has a “different ideological and political plan.” Smith, who represents parts of Montgomery County, told me that he hopes to change approaches to sentencing and parole, and also tackle education and housing in a way that helps keep people outside of the criminal legal system.

I talked to Smith last week about what this turnover means for criminal justice reform, and about his plans for the upcoming term. In the Q&A, transcribed below, he described an “unparalleled opportunity” to promote a new direction, a “holistic long-term approach” over the “knee-jerk reaction” to crime that consists of championing “stronger sentences and mandatory minimums that have been proven not to bear fruit with respect to long-term systemic change.”

Maryland’s 2020 legislative session began on Wednesday.

Smith’s predecessor Zirkin helped push through new mandatory minimums in 2018. Smith, by contrast, now invokes James Forman Jr.’s book “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America” to pledge this would not occur under his watch. 

“I will not let mandatory minimums come out of my committee,” he said. He added that he is “definitely open to repealing some of the mandatory minimums that are on the book.” He argued these sentencing rules trigger such excessive penalties that innocent defendants end up pleading guilty to crimes they did not commit in exchange for prosecutors lowering charges.

Smith said he would take on two other mechanisms that fuel long prison sentences as committee chair: the adult prosecution of youth, and meager parole opportunities.

While Governor Larry Hogan has sought to prosecute more minors as adults, which triggers harsher penalties, Smith made the opposite case: He called for expanding youth justice to make it possible for some people between the ages of 18 and 24 to not be prosecuted as adults and to thereby receive less severe sentences. The brain is still developing in that age range, he noted.

The youth justice system traditionally stops at age 18—only Vermont has “raised the age” above that threshold so far—but efforts to question that limit are rising around the country. 

It is hard for Marylanders serving long sentences to achieve parole. For people with life terms, parole recommendations must be approved by the governor, and parole grants have ground to a halt since the mid-1980s. Smith criticized the state’s governors, especially the two most recent Democrats, for insufficiently using their powers. But he also said this needs statutory change: expanding eligibility for older people, and enabling hearings after a prolonged period of incarceration. These are both reforms debated elsewhere in the country.

In pushing for such reform, Smith will benefit from newly empowered ideological allies. The turnover in his committee comes amid a broader shift toward progressives with the recent ascent of Bill Ferguson, a Democrat from Baltimore City, to the Senate’s presidency. Democrats enjoy a veto-proof supermajority in the legislature while Hogan is a Republican.

Smith indicated that he also intends to work on abolishing juvenile sentences of life without the possibility of parole, and on removing the governor’s direct role in the parole process. While he expressed interest in ending disenfranchisement, he said he would not push that issue this session. 

He also said a priority was confronting racial disparities in incarceration and in sentence length. These should “shock the conscience” but get little attention, he said. Seventy percent of the state’s prison population is African American, while just 30 percent of Marylanders are Black. 

Fighting this racial injustice requires systemic transformations beyond reforming what happens after people have entered the criminal legal system, he argued. He said he would work to reduce school suspensions and ban discrimination against renters based on the source of their income. “Operating outside of the criminal justice system is the best way to prevent these disparities,” he said. “Deal with housing, … the school-to-prison-pipeline.”

The interview was condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

—

You are taking over the Judicial Proceedings Committee, with a record that is considerably more supportive of criminal justice reform than the senator you are replacing, Bobby Zirkin. What has made this political shift possible, and what effects do you think it’ll have on the state?

This is kind of a referendum on where our state is going. Last election cycle, we ended up keeping and gaining a couple of seats in the House and the Senate, so I think it starts off with that. Then, when the Senate President, Senator Mike Miller, announced he’s resigning to focus on his fight against cancer, that ushered in a new generation, which has caused an ideological and generational shift in the Senate. Senator Bill Ferguson from Baltimore City [the Senate’s new president] is 36 years old; Senator Miller was the Senate President for 32 years. 

So this is a huge shift in the state of Maryland and in the caucus. It’s an unparalleled opportunity to help a lot of folks out, with definitely a different ideological and political plan than my predecessor [Senator Zirkin]. I have a good relationship with him personally. I’m looking forward to working with everyone in Maryland. 

What inspired your interest in issues of criminal justice reform? Are there advocacy groups or events advocacy that have played an important role?

When I ran for the House of Delegates [in 2014], part of my platform was to focus on housing and the failed war on drugs. I moved to the Senate and continued to sit on the Judicial Proceedings Committee. You start to educate yourself and gain a greater understanding. You travel and realize what’s happening throughout the entire state, not just Montgomery County or the city suburbs. Obviously, the homicides in Baltimore City have made national headlines; Baltimore City in 2019 had 348 homicides, which is over 300 homicides for the fifth year in a row. This adds political pressure to do something now. 

And in that exigency, there’s a tendency to focus on harsher penalties and mandatory minimums. That’s something that we struggled with in the last couple of years: It begs for a more comprehensive approach than just the mandatory minimums and the higher sentences.

There is a fight now that would seem to echo your last point, between state officials pushing for an approach with heavier prosecution, and the state’s attorney of Baltimore, who objects that they are fueling the politics of mass incarceration. What is your view on that tension?

Most folks are familiar with Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow.” Just fantastic work. Another, maybe lesser-known, book, is “Locking Up Our Own,” by James Forman Jr. He sent every member of my committee a copy of his book at the end of our session two years ago. I got a hold of it, I started reading it, and I read it all in one night; I could not put it down. The short takeaway is that he goes in on how African Americans have played an integral role in what we call mass incarceration, in terms of mandatory minimum and harsher sentences, without taking a more holistic approach. That resonated with me because we were very close with implementing some of these things. I called him up. He said he would be in Baltimore one day and we sat down and had a great conversation. Education like that, and my experience talking with folks all throughout the state, solidified my view that we really have to take a comprehensive approach. 

Those things don’t always pay dividends right away. People want to see a payoff right away in the next year or two. Whereas some of the more systemic changes, some of the more structural changes, some of the longer-term investments that really will bear fruit take hard work and sacrifice now, and maybe you don’t see those political rewards right away. 

If you’re trying to pick more of a long-term strategic look and make the right decisions for our long-term future, ensure that people have economic opportunities, housing opportunities, opportunities to rehabilitate themselves when they’re incarcerated to come out ready to participate in our society. That’s the focus that I’m taking this year. 

Personally, as the new chairman of the Judicial Proceedings in the Senate, I am not interested and I will not let mandatory minimums come out of my committee at least. I can speak to that. But the House Committee has a say and the rest of the Senate has a say, and the rest of the House has a say.

Maryland already has some aggressive mandatory minimums and sentencing enhancements; as you just alluded, some were just created two years ago with your predecessor’s support; you yourself opposed final passage of that reform. You just said that you would not support new mandatory minimums in your committee. Will you also push for bills to eliminate existing ones?

I would support bills to eliminate mandatory minimums. But I want to be very careful because there’s nuance in everything. To make a blanket statement that you’re against mandatory minimums masks some of the nuance: What about for child rape or for some of the most heinous crimes. Do you think people should have a mandatory minimum of 5 to 10 years? Most people would say, ‘Yeah.’ That’s the tension. For a gun crime, if someone robs someone, should you have a mandatory minimum for that? That’s different. There’s an academic or intellectual honesty that you have to have when you’re talking about mandatory minimums. 

Personally, I have an allergy to mandatory minimums because I think it prevents the justice system from weaving through all of the circumstances and really seeking justice, to balance all the factors that were case-specific. There are a lot of perverse ways mandatory minimums are used, not just in the blind sentencing but also because they’re used as a tool of leverage that end up sweeping in people that should never have been swept in in the first place. Folks end up entering into pleas when they’re not even guilty of the initial underlying crime, because they’re afraid of the mandatory minimum hanging over their head. 

So I’m definitely open to repealing some of the mandatory minimums that are on the books. I’m definitely not interested in putting any more on the books, and they will not come out of my committee while I’m chair.

The Justice Policy Institute put out a report in November—and this is directly correlated to what we’re talking about, these longer sentences, these mandatory minimums. They put up this report, which showed that “Maryland leads the nation in incarcerating young Black men, sentenced to the longest prison terms, at a rate 25 percent higher than the next nearest state, Mississippi.” That should shock the conscience. It’s something we haven’t paid much attention to. And that’s something I want to focus the committee’s attention towards.

Besides mandatory minimums, one reason people serve these long sentences in Maryland is the difficulty of obtaining parole and early release, especially for people serving a life sentence. Eligibility for release is also delayed for others serving long sentences. As committee chair, what do you hope to achieve when it comes to reforming parole, and enabling more people who are serving lengthy sentences to be eligible for early release?

We will take a hard look at what parole looks like. We have a parole system where a parole board makes recommendations to the governor; the governor responds up-and-down. There’s some proposal to take the governor out of the question. I think that’s important, but you could get a governor who is less afraid of Willie Horton-style attacks in the future. Credit where it’s due, Governor Larry Hogan has a better record than his Democratic predecessors in terms of granting some of these long-term paroles. And [former Governor] Bob Ehlrich had a better record than [former Governor] Martin O’Malley and [former Governor] Parris Glendening before him, both of whom were Democrats. 

On the other hand, the governor has a terrible record with respect to only offering some of the stronger sentences and mandatory minimums that have been proven not to bear fruit with respect to long-term systemic change. Again, you may get those folks off of the street for a prolonged period of time, but what are you doing to a generation of people that may have a different path in life if only offered the tools to help them do so? You need a more holistic long-term approach, as opposed to the knee-jerk reaction that may bear some immediate fruit but ultimately leaves us in a worse posture.

You mentioned the governor’s role; Maryland is indeed unusual in requiring that governors approve the parole commission’s recommendations for anyone serving a life sentence. A few years ago, a bill to end the governor’s direct role died in the Senate. Do you favor reviving and passing that bill?

I voted for that bill, and I’m still in favor. So I would advocate for passage of that bill. 

I think that some of the more fruitful endeavors could go with allowing certain folks to have a parole opportunity a little earlier. If they’ve shown they’ve made significant progress —been in training education, behaved themselves, shown contrition — at least they can have an opportunity to hit the board a little earlier. Let’s say 25 years. Now, the balance there is that every time you have a parole hearing, the families of the victims have to be notified and participate in that process and that’s a revictimization, and that’s tough because you hear some of the most tragic stories there. But I think you balance that with, ‘Look, you’ve got an opportunity for an earlier parole date; if it gets rejected, then you can’t do it again for, let’s say, 5-10 years.’ I think that there’s a balance to be struck there. That’s something that could be of immediate benefit. 

Our elderly population: for the geriatric prison population, the recidivism rates are immensely low. It costs us a lot of money and it doesn’t leave our communities any less safe if we have these folks locked up and incarcerated. So that’s another point that we can make serious progress with regards to parole in Maryland.

So expand opportunities for parole for people above a certain age.

55.

On the other side of the age spectrum, Maryland still allows the possibility of life without parole sentences for minors, even as a lot of states have abolished that possibility. Will you support and push for a bill that abolishes life without the possibility of parole sentences for minors?

That’s definitely something I’m interested in; we’ve had a bill in our committee the past few years. For juveniles, for the emerging adult population, that’s something that we may need to adjust. I know that Senator Delores Kelley has been an advocate for that, so has Delegate Erek Barron. It’s tough, but it’s something that we can make some progress on this year. That’s something I’m definitely looking forward to working on.

Are there other issues relating to youth justice that you wish to prioritize?

We’re going to be focusing on the juvenile justice system. The Justice Policy Institute, some of the recommendations they highlight are specifically for emerging adults. That’s 18- to 24-year-olds. Between 18 to 24, proven science shows that you’re still developing, and maybe we need to take a different approach to how we’re sentencing people and if we’re sentencing people as adults. When you sentence folks as adults when they’re in that age group, you get a result like what you have in Maryland: 70 percent of all people in Maryland prisons and nearly 80 percent of people serving at least 10 years are Black, and I think most of them were sentenced as emerging adults.

By focusing on that population for sentencing restructuring, we’d do ourselves a great service in the future in preventing the next generation of recidivism and incarceration. So giving a hard look at how we sentence emerging adults is going to be something I direct the committee’s attention towards.

So you’re interested in pushing the boundaries of the juvenile justice system beyond the age of 18, and integrating people above the age of 18 into that system?

Yes.

Moments ago, you mentioned the staggering racial inequality in Maryland prisons. About 30 percent of Marylanders are African Americans, but the share of African Americans in the prison population is 70 percent. What do you see as the main factors in and outside of the criminal legal system that fuel this? What are specific ways that you wish to confront to diminish the racial disparities of the criminal legal system?

Operating outside of the criminal justice system is the best way to prevent these disparities. Deal with housing, deal with in-school suspensions or out-of-school suspensions, the school-to-prison-pipeline. Those are two things I have focused on. 

I wrote and passed a law so we would never do school suspensions for preschoolers. Studies show that pattern starts in the more formative years, and then we are in high school and there are truancy and academic achievement issues. All this compounds and makes people more susceptible and likely to engage in crime and get involved in the criminal justice system. It starts that early. 

A second thing I’ve been working on is housing. In Maryland, we still have what’s called source of income discrimination: you can discriminate based on someone’s legal source of income. If they have alimony, if they get benefits for being a veteran or from what happened on a job, all the way to Section 8 vouchers. What that does is that a number of voucher holders can’t participate in vibrant parts of our economy, in certain areas of opportunity where schools are better or it may be closer to your job or closer to public transportation, because the housing unit refuses to take that voucher. There’s a stigma attached to it. I have a bill this year, and I’m very optimistic it will pass, that will get rid of the source of income discrimination so that everyone can participate in and work closer to quality housing, schools, economic opportunities. 

From housing to the school-to-prison pipeline, to restructuring some of our sentencing guidelines, it’s a comprehensive approach.

On this matter of “operating outside of the criminal justice system,” in an op-ed last year you called for fighting “overcriminalization.” In it, you specifically endorsed legalizing marijuana. What other behaviors besides this do you think have been overcriminalized? How would you take the criminal justice system out of that?

That’s right. I’ve been the sponsor to legalize marijuana for several years, and continue to fight that fight. I’d say we’re a couple of years away. We have a commission working on some of those details of how to do this in the proper way. I’m optimistic we’ll see that sooner rather than later. 

I have to give a lot of credit to my colleague in the house, Delegate David Moon. When we ran together in 2014, he [talked of these] smaller, smaller antiquated crimes that serve as a pretext for engagement in communities of color for law enforcement. We’re talking about anything from loitering, gambling, truancy issues, licensing, suspended licences: all of these things are used as a pretext to get people caught up in the criminal justice system. 

So I’m happy to work with my friend and colleague in the House, David Moon, on those issues. We’ve been going through the codebook every year and trying to pluck away some of these smaller crimes that are really antiquated, but they’re still on the books, and they’re still used every day as the pretext for law enforcement to make that initial engagement and eventually get someone arrested and part of the criminal justice system.

In some states, there’s growing debate about voting rights for incarcerated people. Is that something you’re open to? What is your view of the proper place to restore voting rights?

There was unfinished business with respect to folks that were out on parole or probation, whether those folks could vote. We restored those voting rights just three years ago. Some great studies show that folks that are getting into civics and voting are much less apt to recidivate, and it gives them more people more of an incentive to participate in the political process. So we are making significant progress there. I would definitely look into what else can be done to expand or restore access to the franchise for folks, especially with criminal records. But we’ve done some significant work there.

So what would be your approach if the issue of expanding that further is raised?

It’s something I’m interested in, but it’s not something that’s on the agenda this term given the recent success that we’ve had.

One other factor fueling incarceration in Maryland: A third of prison admissions in Maryland are due to violations of parole or probation conditions. What do you think the state can and should do for probation and parole to be things that trip people up and incarcerate so many people–especially in connection to what you were saying about certain areas being overpoliced?

The Justice Reinvestment Act [in 2016] was fantastic: That approached some of those technical violations you talk about for parole and probation. But I think it didn’t go far enough. It addressed them in a sense that you test positive for marijuana when you’re going through your urinalysis or if you miss a meeting; no one should go back to jail because they were positive for marijuana or they missed a meeting because they couldn’t get there or don’t live close enough. Where I think we could make more progress is the revocation caps: putting a cap on how much time a person could actually serve if they do violate some aspect of their parole or probation. For instance, you shouldn’t be serving a longer sentence for the violation of parole than you did for the initial underlying crime.

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A growing number of prosecutors are limiting or ending the prosecution of marijuana possession. The latest to join this trend are in Alexandria, Virginia, and Louisville, Kentucky.

Bryan Porter, the commonwealth’s attorney of Alexandria (a city of about 150,000in Northern Virginia), has announced that people charged with simple marijuana possession will be eligible for pretrial diversion. Their case would be dismissed after up to nine months of supervision and drug screening. This policy goes beyond state statutes, which only provide diversion for people’s first offense. It will help people “avoid the consequences of a criminal record for marijuana possession,” Porter told me. It has no restrictions regarding prior criminal history, he said, nor regarding the amount of marijuana possessed—as long as his staff does not consider possession to indicate an “intent to distribute.”

I asked Porter why he is not adopting a policy of just declining to prosecute marijuana cases, as others have. After all, this program remains burdensome for defendants and for law enforcement. He pointed to a state Supreme Court’s ruling in May that denied the Norfolk prosecutor’s power to dismiss marijuana cases filed by local law enforcement if judges were refusing to. Porter said his policy is on safer ground because he is using “the authority that I do have with regard to the disposition of cases.” That said, he acknowledges that even under his plan judges would need to grant the motions to dismiss the charges of people who have gone through the program. The question remains, therefore, whether local judges are sympathetic to reform. “My understanding is that the judges will honor our dismissal motions,” Porter said. “I do not anticipate any problems.” He also called on the legislature to decriminalize the possession of marijuana.

In Jefferson County, Kentucky (home to Louisville), County Attorney Mike O’Connell rolled out a policy of no longer prosecuting people for possessing up to one ounce of marijuana. It applies to cases where marijuana possession is the only or most severe charge. O’Connell pointed to the racial inequality in marijuana prosecutions. “For me to truly be a minister of justice, I cannot sit idly by when communities of color are treated differently,” he said. In January, a Louisville Courier Journal investigation found that African Americans are far likelier than the city’s white residents to be charged with marijuana possession, despite comparable rates of use.

As county attorney, O’Connell has jurisdiction over lower-level offense. (More severe charges fall under the jurisdiction of the commonwealth’s attorneys.) This covers the possession of up to eight ounces of pot. I asked his office why it continues to prosecute people who possess between one and eight ounces, rather than decriminalizing altogether. “With marijuana still fully illegal in Kentucky, we felt this was the most appropriate step at this time,” said a spokesperson. O’Connell’s decision has sparked discussion elsewhere in the state.

Maryland prosecutor will no longer request cash bail

Aisha Braveboy, the state’s attorney of Prince George’s County, announced a significant bail reform in a speech this month. “I do not believe in the cash bail system,” she said. “Starting October 1st, my office will no longer request cash bail as a condition of release.”

Reform advocates express optimism about the reform in the Washington Post. They also note implementation will be crucial. Reducing pretrial detention will depend on the judges who actually set bond, and who could deny people pretrial release. Also, what replaces cash bail will matter greatly.

One cause for caution is that Braveboy’s office told the Post that prosecutors could seek alternative conditions for release such as drug testing or electronic monitoring. These are burdensome, and could carry costs if defendants choose private monitoring or “less demanding” oversight, the Post reports. Denise Roberts, the communications director of the state’s attorney’s office, told me that prosecutors would seek release on personal recognizance, with no additional conditions, if they judge that a defendant “does not pose a danger” and that “there is no risk of failure to appear.” In addition, prosecutors could seek to deny bond to defendants whom they deem to be dangerous. Roberts said there should be no cases where prosecutors would have previously sought cash bail but would now seek to deny any release.

Hawaii prosecutor reduces charges for driving offenses

Justin Kollar, the chief prosecutor of Kauai County, rolled out a new policy to lessen penalties for driving without a license or insurance. These offenses are often linked to poverty and an inability to pay court debt, which triggers license suspensions. Hawaii law provides for harsher penalties and detention when a traffic infraction is treated as a repeat violation. Such enhancements “disproportionately impact the economically disadvantaged,” Kollar said, trapping them in a “cycle they can’t get out of.” So his office will treat all such infractions as first-time violations, regardless of prior history.

Hawaii’s other three chief prosecutors oppose Kollar’s move. They have a history of opposing criminal justice reform.

Elsewhere in the country, DAs like Rachael Rollins in Boston and Amy Weirich in Memphis have gone a step further: They have said they are altogether declining to prosecute cases of driving on a suspended license when the suspension is due to unpaid debt.

I asked Kollar why he is not adopting such a policy. He replied that his office only has access to limited information regarding “what caused the original suspension or revocation,” and that he cannot “see if the suspension or revocation was strictly due to fines.” He added that he would consider dismissing cases if the state provided such data, and that he would support legislation to end the suspension of driver’s licenses over unpaid fines.   

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