Voice of the Experienced (VOTE)

VOTE founder and executive director Norris Henderson and deputy director Bruce Reilly were both formerly incarcerated for murder. ^{5 6}

Voters Organized to Educate (VOE) is VOTE’s political organization sister group. In addition to running student chapters and making candidate endorsements, VOE trains formerly incarcerated individuals to run for office. ⁷

History

In 1982, Norris Henderson and Kenneth Johnston, who were then incarcerated for murder, began organizing fellow inmates during prison riots to respond to increasingly strict drug policy. Three years later, Henderson and Johnston began teaching law classes to other inmates in an attempt to organize them further. In 1990, Henderson and Johnston formed the Angola Special Civics Project (ASCP) for inmates to advocate for political policies while still incarcerated in the Louisiana State Penitentiary. Norris worked with ASCP until he was released on parole in 2003. A year later, Norris and several former ASCP members established Voice of the Experienced (VOTE), originally called Voice of the Ex-Offenders until 2016. Norris also started working with a group called the Orleans Parish Prison Reform Coalition (OPPRC), which now functions as a local affiliate of VOTE. By 2008, VOTE began to hire paid staff to pursue left-of-center anti-prison initiatives. ⁸

Activities

Voice of the Experienced is vocal in its opposition to the American criminal justice system, labeling the United States a “carceral state” and advocating for a total or near-abolition of prisons. VOTE is led entirely by formerly incarcerated people. The organization has published a set of left-of-center demands, including limiting incarceration, ending the deportation of illegal immigrants, and giving all convicted felons the right to vote. ⁹

VOTE claims that employment, housing, medical, and voting rights are denied to former prisoners and promotes policies to expand them through activism and legislative advocacy. ¹⁰

Advocacy on Behalf of Former Prisoners

VOTE opposes the right of employers, particularly government employers, to consider a job applicant’s criminal record. In 2015, VOTE successfully lobbied the Obama administration to remove all questions about criminal history from federal job applications. The following year, VOTE campaigned for a similar standard in Louisiana, convincing the state government to remove questions related to criminal history from roughly 40,000 state job applications. In 2017. VOTE placed further pressure on the Louisiana government, demanding that the Louisiana Civil Service Commission remove criminal history questions from applications for classified jobs. ²

VOTE also opposes the right of landlords and housing authorities to consider a potential tenant’s criminal record. In the fall of 2018, the organization launched a campaign to ban questions about criminal history from both public and private rental applications in New Orleans. ³

When Louisiana passed Act 636, which made it legal for most felons to vote, VOTE celebrated the move as restoring the voting rights of formerly incarcerated people. ⁴ VOTE has also alleged that prisoners are denied medical rights, partnering with Tulane University School of Medicine to provide medical assistance to former prisoners through its Formerly Incarcerated Transitions Clinic. ¹¹

Prisoner Advocacy

VOTE advocates for improved conditions for prisoners. In 2023, VOTE sued the Louisiana State Penitentiary over the prison’s alleged use of “farm lines,” where prisoners were allegedly forced to engage in farm work under coercion. As of April 2025, the case was still ongoing. ¹²

In 2023, VOTE joined with similar left-of-center organizations, such as the Vera Institute of Justice, to oppose the development of a mental health wing in a New Orleans jail. The nonprofits claimed the new wing was a “dystopian nightmare” and “panopticon” for mentally ill prisoners. ¹³

Rights for Victims of Criminal Activities

VOTE claims to support crime prevention and to represent the interests of those who have been victimized by crime by partnering with a left-of-center national organization called Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice (CSSJ). Yet CSSJ itself opposes incarceration, explicitly opposing the construction of more facilities for incarceration. CSSJ’s platform only focuses on economic development in high-crime communities to prevent “cycles” of crime, rather than defending the rights of individual victims. ¹⁴

Prison Research

In 2024, VOTE released a report on the Louisiana Department of Corrections’ budget report, which VOTE claims indicated a trend of “regression into reactionary, antiquated punitive measures that fail to address crime prevention effectively.” Prior to this, in July 2023, VOTE released a report on the demographics of Louisiana’s prison population, while in in May 2020 it released a report on its assessment of the “equity” of Louisiana’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. ¹⁵

Diamond House

In 2022, VOTE formed Diamond House, a transitional facility for women recently released from prison. ¹⁶

Voters Organized to Educate

Voters Organized to Educate is the lobbying and electoral advocacy sister group of Voice of the Experienced, which manages student-led chapters across the country. ¹⁷

VOE’s Know Your Vote program provides information on candidates, voter registration, and elections to voters. The program operates in partnership with BallotReady, an online election-education resource launched by the Social New Venture Challenge at the University of Chicago. ¹⁸

VOE’s Leadership Institute recruits and trains formerly incarcerated individuals to run for office, including in registering to run for office, public speaking, campaign management, fundraising, and political narrative development. ⁷

VOE’s City Watch program organizes VOE members to engage in political activism at the local level, including by attending city council meetings. ¹⁹

VOE endorses candidates based on a four-step process that includes hosting a candidate forum for VOE members questions and conducting an in-depth interview. ²⁰

Policy Advocacy

VOE has previously advocated for government investment in anti-poverty services as a means of reducing crime. VOE supports an increase in school funding, preventing discrimination against formerly incarcerated individuals, a higher minimum wage, more funding for mental health support, and more government support for low-income housing. ²¹

VOE opposes law-enforcement techniques it claims are based on racial, religious, or “identity” profiling. ²²

VOE supports a system it calls “restorative justice,” or what it claims as a separation of the criminal justice system and the school system. It also advocates for bail reform, reduced sentencing, and a moratorium on jail construction and expansion. ²³

Leadership

Norris Henderson is the founder and executive director of Voice of the Experienced. Henderson’s biography claims he was “wrongfully incarcerated for 27 years” (a claim Advocate columnist James Gill rejected in a column on Henderson’s life and work ²⁴) and calls him “a trailblazer for freeing other wrongfully convicted people.” Henderson is a former Soros Justice Fellow. ²⁵ The Open Society Foundations was founded by billionaire hedge fund manager and currency trader George Soros. ²⁶ Soros supports left-of-center causes around the world and has contributed $32 billion to left-leaning organizations by 2018. ²⁷

Despite VOTE’s claim that Henderson was wrongfully convicted, his murder conviction has never been legally overturned. Henderson was implicated in the murder of Henry Joseph in 1974 by Joseph’s sister, Betty Jean Joseph. In 1975, Betty Jean herself was shot and identified Henderson as her assailant before she died. A jury convicted Henderson of her murder in 1977, and an appeals court upheld the conviction. Judge Calvin Johnson also upheld Henderson’s conviction in a 1994 bench trial, but nonetheless released Henderson in 2003 when he became eligible for parole. ²⁸

In 2023, Henderson earned $267,999 in compensation from VOTE. ²⁹

Bruce Reilly is the deputy director of VOTE. Reilly served nearly 12 years for second-degree murder before being released from prison with a 20-year probation sentence. ⁶ In 2023, Reilly earned $216,015 in compensation from VOTE. ²⁹

Checo Yancy is a founding member of VOTE and the policy director of Voters Organized to Educate. Like Henderson, Yancy was imprisoned after receiving a life sentence in 1983 for aggravated kidnapping, aggravated crimes against nature, and possession of cocaine. In 1995, Yancy’s sentence was commuted by the governor to 75 years, and in 2003, both Yancy and Henderson were released on parole. Yancy has also worked with Prison Alternatives, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the American Civil Liberties Union. ^{30 31 32}

Finances

In 2023, Voice of the Experienced earned $9,148,727 in revenue, spent $3,616,704, and ended the year with $12,765,557 in assets. ²⁹

From 2019 to 2025, VOTE received five grants worth a total of almost $1.8 million from the Ford Foundation, the largest charitable foundation in the United States. ³³

From 2019 to 2022, VOTE received four grants worth a total of $1.9 million from the Open Society Foundations, owned by billionaire philanthropist George Soros. All four grants were for “general support.” ³⁴

In 2018, VOTE reported more than $1.88 million in total revenue and net assets of more than $1.38 million. VOTE still goes by its old name, “Voice of the Ex-Offenders,” for financial purposes. ³⁵

In 2016, VOTE received a $325,500 general support grant from Open Philanthropy, a left-of-center funding group founded in 2016 by political donor Cari Tuna and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Open Philanthropy also issued a grant to Voters Organized to Educate. ³⁶