Fewer than 335 people cast ballots from the Rikers Island jail complex in last year’s general election. Roughly 6,000 detainees were eligible. The City Council wants to know why, and what comes next.

Lawmakers spent four hours Tuesday at a hearing before the Council’s Committee on Governmental Operations, pressing corrections officials and elections administrators on one of the city’s sharpest civic failures: incarcerated New Yorkers who can vote, legally, but don’t. The numbers tell the story plainly. Even with advocates pushing hard to lift participation in 2025, only 621 detainees requested ballots at all. Just 335 sent them back.

“There’s a large population eligible to vote that’s not even requesting a ballot,” said Queens City Councilmember Tiffany Cabán. “There’s a lot of room for improvement. That’s the basis for legislation here — to really pick up those numbers.”

The return rate among those who did request a ballot was about 54%. Citywide, that figure runs closer to 73%, according to Michael Ryan, executive director of the Board of Elections. Ryan didn’t dispute the gap, but he pushed back on how it’s framed.

“So, it’s off the mark but a lot of people don’t return their ballots whether they are held in custody or not,” he told the committee.

Fair point, maybe. But advocates and several Council members argue the comparison misses something essential: people on Rikers don’t have the same tools to navigate a confusing mail ballot process. No computer. Limited access to legal help. A corrections environment that isn’t exactly set up to walk detainees through ballot cure procedures.

The legislation moving through the Council would change that math directly. The bills would require the Department of Correction to help voters fix error-ridden or incomplete ballots, make it easier for detainees to request absentee ballots in the first place, and force new public reporting on how many ballots get submitted, corrected, or rejected each cycle. Right now, that data doesn’t exist in any consistent, accessible form. Nobody’s been keeping score in a way that lets the public hold anyone accountable.

Councilmember Gale Brewer, the Manhattan Democrat who chairs the Committee on Governmental Operations, wasn’t softening the assessment. “Voting is our most basic right,” she said. “But on Rikers Island very few people appear able to exercise that right.”

The most aggressive proposal on the table would place actual in-person polling sites on Rikers itself. Supporters say it’s the only fix that addresses the root problem: absentee voting is complicated under the best conditions, and a city jail isn’t that. Advocates point to Cook County, Illinois, Washington, D.C., and parts of Colorado, where jail-based polling has produced turnout numbers that dwarf what New York manages now.

Won’t happen soon. Not without Albany.

Ryan was direct about the legal wall. Creating polling sites on Rikers requires state legislation, full stop. “The board is not permitted to depart from statutory authority or substitute its independent judgment for the law,” he told the committee. That sends the question to the state legislature, where nobody Tuesday was predicting a fast track in 2026.

The political backdrop isn’t making any of this easier. The hearing comes as President Donald Trump and Republican allies push to drastically limit mail-in voting nationally, a push that could complicate both federal guidance and the broader public appetite for expanding ballot access to incarcerated people. New York’s Democratic majority in Albany provides some insulation, but the timetable for Rikers-specific legislation remains unclear.

What’s clear is that 04 of the ballots cast from Rikers in 2025 came from a universe of 14 times that many people who were eligible but didn’t even ask for one. The Council’s proposals don’t solve that entirely, but Cabán and Brewer are betting that mandating better systems, better data, and more active outreach from the Department of Correction changes those numbers before the next election cycle.

The committee has not yet scheduled a vote on the package.