Foreign DUers: Are felons allowed to vote in your country?

[arcos]

I'm not talking about people who have served their sentences, but actual inmates.

Are polling places installed in jails and prisons?

[LiberteToujours]

1. In Canada, yes.

[arcos]

2. they are in Costa Rica too...

and that's yet another thing I can't understand about the USA.

[Omnibus]

3. It's very simple...

Most felons come from demographics {minorities, the young, the poor) that vote Democratic. So of course they can't be allowed to vote. Can you imagine if our 2 million prisoners were allowed to go to the polls? Many "red" states that are home to a growing prison industry would suddenly find themselves "blue"! In fact, that's why many states don't even let EX-felons vote. Even after they come out of prison, they're STILL tainted with those Democratic tendencies.

Remember, kids, disenfranchising voters is just the Republican way of evening the playing field, since if everyone voted Repubs could NEVER get elected.

[arcos]

7. but why hasn't the Democratic party raised hell about it? n/t

[iverglas]

14. heh ... read much criminal justice thinking hereabouts?

"but why hasn't the Democratic party raised hell about it?"

Two reasons that I can think of: external and internal.

Does the party really want to take on board yet another policy that would alienate it from that "values" voting population??

Oh good -- in addition to being the party of abortion and homosexuality, let's be the party of mollycoddling felons. ;) We aren't just tree-hugging liberals, we're criminal-hugging loons.

But it isn't just outside pressure that prevents it, it's internal pressure. Even here at good old liberal DU, you wouldn't get consensus on re-enfranchising people even after their sentences are served. Good grief, the death penalty gets good press around here.

On the values issue, it's another instance of where the real values of liberals/progressives/democrats -- human, constitutional, civil rights -- just aren't even in the discourse, let alone leading it as they should be.

In Canada, by contrast, the "values" discourse in elections and in general, other than among the loony right wing, centres on rights. Same-sex marriage has been won because to deny it is a violation of the right to equal treatment; no aspect of abortion is criminally regulated because women have a right to make our own choices; inmates of penitentiaries vote because they have a right to vote.

We don't spend a lot of time talking about "freedom"; the word wouldn't be heard in an election campaign. It would be like arguing about the weather. We're free; now let's get a life, eh? Anybody yammering about "freedom" to get votes would look like a moron.

But we get pretty exercised about rights, and we get very litigious about them. And we place our greatest trust in the courts when it comes to protecting them, above Parliament and any other institution or persons in our society. And no politician with any sense messes with them.

In the US, yer general public hears someone talking about his/her rights, and immediately assumes that this person wants something of theirs, or wants something that they haven't got themselves, or -- most likely -- that the person is after something s/he doesn't deserve. Because if s/he were truly righteous, s/he either wouldn't want what is being claimed (e.g. same-sex marriage and abortion), or would be prosperous already and not be needing all this "special treatment" (e.g. economic anti-discrimination measures).

We don't tend to judge/blame to this extent. We don't assign responsibility for misfortune to the unfortunate, we recognize that they are disadvantaged and are entitled not to be. And we don't think that anything that somebody else gets, in terms of the ability to do something of a private nature without adverse consequences, is going to diminish what we have.

Given the social climate in the US, and the current moaning about how the Democratic Party took the big hit over "values", I can't imagine how the party could introduce the idea of re-enfranchising persons with criminal convictions, let alone inmates, and remain standing. ;) Not until the whole area of "values" is reclaimed by those with the real values -- and, frankly, until they actually do a better job of defining those values themselves.

[iverglas]

11. actually a little more complex

I would expect that the rules regarding voting go back well before the current criminal justice situation in the US -- and perhaps even before African-Americans had the vote.

My bet is that the phenomenon springs from longstanding ingrained features of the USAmerican psyche: judgmentalism and blame-assigning.

USAmericans enjoy a love affair with judging and blaming that is not shared by people in Canada or Europe. Jerry Springer is native to the US; "prosperity" religious cults are native to the US. It connects back to the variety of Christianity that took early root there, the notion that righteousness isn't just its own reward, it is an excellent investment for future profit: god will shower the righteous with earthly rewards. And conversely, lack of social/economic success is evidence, by logical inference, of the moral turpitude of the poor.

USAmerican criminal justice has long been heavily punitive by comparison to criminal justice in comparable societies. The rational connection between the crime and the punishment is more tenuous in the US, and sentencing is more often used to satisfy public urges for vengeance ... and the public's need to distinguish itself from the bad guys by judging and blaming, reassuring themselves that they are the good guys.

(After all, if you're poor but want to believe that you're righteous, and you swallow the line that you're the author of your own misfortunes because in 'Murrica anybody can become a Rockefeller or a Reagan if s/he is just good enough, there just has to be somebody who is badder and has greater misfortunes than you.)

Of course, since righteousness in fact is no guarantee of riches, perfectly decent people are poor. But poverty, and a lack of opportunity to escape it, and the callous disregard of one's plight on the part of one's fellow citizens, do engender antisocial behaviour, like crime.

So quite predictably, the socially and economically disenfranchised are over-represented among the population with criminal records, and are then electorally disenfranchised as well.

Which is all quite convenient for those who want the poor to stay poor, and the electoral disenfranchisement mechanism certainly then becomes part of the overall machine of oppression.

And the whole thing becomes another example of the complete counter-productiveness of judging and blaming, rather than seeking solutions to the problems that contribute to the behaviour that people are being judged and blamed for. If social and economic disenfranchisment engender antisocial behaviour, electoral disenfranchisement is hardly going to have a rehabilitative effect.

[abaris]

4. I have to admit ....

...that I don't know (Austria and Germany). I only know, that if you served your sentence, you are allowed to vote. But if I remember correctly, the prison inmates don't lose their civil rights anymore. That has been abolishes some 20 years ago.

[arcos]

8. Welcome to DU!

:hi:

[foreigncorrespondent]

5. Currently in Australia...

...prisoners serving more than five years cannot vote in elections. From what I understand though there is a bill which if passed will remove all voting rights for all prisoners. The idea is, because we don't have the death penalty here, we are still giving them a death sentence in a way by giving them civil death. No rights what so ever.

Do I support this? Not at all. But what can you expect from one of Bush*s mates in control.

You know, Howard has always been an asshole regardless, but since 2000, and your stolen election, I swear the Bush* admin has been dabling in Australian politics. In the last four years this country has moved further to the right, than I have ever seen it in my life time. The fundamentalist idiots have really gotten a voice, and there is just no swinging the country back towards to the left at all. Lord knows we tried in October.

[arcos]

9. I know...

same thing has happened here in Costa RIca... People sometimes don't understand how much influence the US has over other countries. ANYTHING that happens in the US affects us all, and it affects the public debate of the issues.

[iverglas]

6. some details about Canada

If you want to file it away -- this is the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada regarding voting by federal inmates.

http://www.lexum.umontreal.ca/csc-scc/en/pub/2002/vol3/html/2002scr3_0519.html
Sauvé v. Canada, a 5-4 decision of the Court.

We don't have "felons" in Canada. We have people who have been convicted of indictable offences, which are roughly equivalent to felonies in US states in most cases.

Criminal law is under federal jurisdiction, and where sentences are served depends on the length of a sentence.

Federal penitentiaries, much more "hard time" than provincial prisons, are for sentences of two years or more. That's why it's common for someone to be sentenced to "two years less a day" -- to keep them in the provincial prison system, and likely closer to home with the benefits of family/community contact.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982) says:

1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.

3. Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote in an election of members of the House of Commons or of a legislative assembly and to be qualified for membership therein.

15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

The Court held that the ban on voting by prisoners was, on its face, a violation of democratic rights and equality rights. The federal government attempted to justify the violation under section 1, and failed.

The Court's reasoning really is quite interesting and enlightening for someone who opposes disenfranchisement. The few paragraphs (the "headnote") at that site following the italicized identification of the issues and preceding the hyperlinks for cases cited by the Court contain a summary of both the majority and minority reasons.

There has never been a prohibition in Canada on voting by persons convicted of criminal offences who are not incarcerated at the time.

Inmates vote in their home constituencies. (Otherwise, the results in small communities where institutions are located could be skewed.)

http://www.elections.ca/eca/eim/article_search/article.asp?id=63&lang=e&frmPageSize=&textonly=false

To vote in a federal electoral event, incarcerated electors must register by filling out an Application for Registration and Special Ballot, which is made available through each correctional institution. A staff member in the institution serves as a liaison officer and helps the electors register.

For electoral purposes, an inmate's address of ordinary residence is not the institution in which he or she is serving, but rather the first possible option from the following list: the inmate's residence before being incarcerated, the residence of a spouse or a relative, the place where the elector was arrested or the last court where he or she was convicted and sentenced. Votes are counted and applied in the electoral district of the address an inmate has identified, rather than the electoral district that includes the institution.

[arcos]

10. very interesting... thanks! n/t

[DemExpat]

12. Yes - in The Netherlands.

Only those that have been diagnosed as having psychiatric distubances may be withheld from voting..

DemEx

[althecat]

13. In NZ not if they are in Jail...

If not in Jail they can vote...

[Kellanved]

15. of course

In Germany that is. However a sentence can include "loss of civil honorable rights " i.e. passive voting, jury duty, ...
.
Active voting can be taken away as well, albeit only in extremely hard cases. In any way, loss of voting rights, be it active or passive, is limited to five years, regardless of any other penalties.

Also, voting rights are usually only taken away in cases of election fraud and similar crimes, most inmates have the right vote (or to get elected). Larger prisons have their own polling stations, absentee ballot is used for smaller ones.

[harpo]

16. I think the law in texas says if you have a felony you can't vote

but I would have to check to verify.