The D.C. Board of Elections says it has sent voter-registration forms to 2,400 residents who are serving out felony sentences, marking the first step in implementing a new D.C. law that restores the right to vote for people with felony records.

The voter-registration forms were sent to incarcerated District residents at 107 federal facilities across the U.S., according to Alice Miller, the director of the elections board. At a board hearing Wednesday, Miller said the agency is working with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to ensure that incarcerated residents receive their registration forms and are able to return them on time so they can vote via absentee ballot in the November election.

This summer, D.C. became the first jurisdiction in the country to restore voting rights for people serving time as a result of felony convictions, although it already did so for those who complete their sentences. Maine and Vermont are the only other U.S. jurisdictions where people convicted of felonies do not lose their right to vote.

Proponents of the District’s new law say it will help D.C. residents feel more connected to the communities they may eventually return to, especially while they are serving time far away from home. Because of D.C.’s lack of statehood (and its own state prison system), residents convicted of felonies are sent to federal prisons across the U.S. Some are as far away as California.

“We want our Washingtonians who are far away in federal custody to feel connected to their communities,” Ward 7 resident Keith Towery said during a public hearing on the voting-rights legislation last fall. “Washingtonians go to federal prison, they learn to read and write, why not teach them to vote? They can bring that back to the community.”

Residents awaiting trial for felonies or misdemeanors at the D.C. Jail are also eligible to vote in November, but plans to open two polling places at that facility have been derailed by continuing concerns over COVID-19, which has spread rapidly at many jails and prisons in the U.S. Miller, the board of elections director, says people who are incarcerated at the jail can vote by absentee ballot, as some were able to do in the past.