Behind a 22-foot-high granite wall and layers of metal security gates, Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon ran through the state's voter registration rules and how to cast a ballot absentee before Election Day.
His audience: more than a dozen people incarcerated at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in St. Cloud who will soon be released and can vote in the November election under a new state law.
"The minute you step out of here, you get your right to vote back," Simon told the group, all part of the facility's reentry program.
"I know that you've all got a big list in your head of other things you're preparing for or thinking about. I don't pretend that this is at the top of this list, I just want to make sure it's on your list."
The trip is Simon's second to a correctional facility since Minnesota became the 22nd state in June to give people with a felony conviction their voting rights as soon as they're released from incarceration. State officials estimate the change will affect 55,000 people in the state. Roughly 500 to 600 people are released from the state's prisons each month.
Previously, those people had to wait to vote until they were off probation and had paid all fines connected to their conviction. Now, a voter registration form is included in their discharge packet and they can register to vote the moment they're released.
"I'm released on Monday, so I'm good to vote?" inmate Jon Treechee asked Simon, who clarified that he still needed to fill out a registration form, either ahead of the election or using same-day registration on Election Day.
Others wanted to know more about how to cast their ballot early, or if they can still vote if they are out of prison but don't have a permanent address. When asked if they intended to vote in the fall election, everyone's hand shot up in the air.
Donald Thomas hasn't voted in Minnesota for at least eight years and the chance to cast his ballot again is "huge."
"I can have a say in my future and my kids' future," he said.
The new law comes after two decades of advocacy from a coalition of groups that argued prohibiting felons on probation from voting excluded them from being full participants in society, sometimes even decades after they were released from jail or prison.
It was part of a sweeping set of changes to state elections law last year, including automatic voter registration, preregistering 16 and 17-year-olds to vote and giving Minnesotans the option to join a permanent vote-by-mail list, rather than requesting an absentee ballot each election cycle.
State officials are now in the midst of a public awareness campaign, including efforts to connect with people who were previously incarcerated. The Department of Corrections has provided lists of people who are out of prison but are still "on paper," or serving probation. Community groups have tried to target those individuals to let them know about their restored voting rights.
Department of Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell said formerly incarcerated individuals' testimony on the bill last session paved the way for current inmates to have that right restored when they walk out of prison.
"For a lot of the people who are locked up today, it was the voice of those people who went before them, who sat in those very seats, who played a very critical role in this legislation," he said. "That makes a big difference in terms of empowering these folks."
Over the last decade, a group of states around the country have chipped away at laws on the books that bar former felons from voting, but some have reversed those rights. Last year, Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia used his executive powers to rescind a policy that automatically restored voting rights to residents who finished their felony sentences.
Simon said that's bucking an "unmistakable" bipartisan trend in the other direction.
"I don't think what Virginia has done is going to stop that."
