Why are felons barred from voting?

[TechBear_Seattle]

Is it just punishment, or are there other reasons?

[I Have A Dream]

1. I've wondered this also.

:shrug:

[ck4829]

2. It's required that we have some irony in our government

Ironic, because we have convicted criminals like Eliot Abrams and John Poindexter influencing our government.

[melm00se]

3. 14th Amendment

section 2:

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

the USSC ruled in 1974 that the 14th Amendment grants clear permission to states to deny voting rights to felons.




Edited for clarity and additional info

[TahitiNut]

7. Interestingly, however, the apportionment is not (afaik) affected.

I know of no adjustment to census enumeration to account for disenfranchisement.

[Eric J in MN]

4. In Vermont, even prisoners can vote.

It should be that way in all 50 states.

A citizen is still a citizen while he's in prison.

[sinkingfeeling]

5. Only in some states. Many, like mine, reinstate their right to vote after they have served their

sentences. Only ten states completely bar a felon from voting and 2 allow them to vote while in prison (VT and Maine).

http://felonvoting.procon.org/viewresource.asp?resourceID=286

Edited: Here's a more visual representation:
http://www.aclu.org/votingrights/exoffenders/statelegispolicy2007.html

[PVnRT]

11. Wow - my home state isn't completely bass-ackward

Go Indiana.

[tannybogus]

12. I'm amazed

I though SC would take away the vote, their DL, and

anything else. This state is so weird.

[varkam]

20. In KY...

you can actually vote as a felon, you just have to petition the governor's office to restore your rights after discharge from prison, probation, or parole.

[raccoon]

6. Maybe to keep members of the underclass from voting for

progressive candidates?

[librechik]

21. Bingo--it's a plank in the Republican platform

but of course, Republicans are never subject to justice like that (or any justice, really)

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. Because of the disproportionate number of minority and poor felons.

[TahitiNut]

9. Perhaps to avoid issues of prison reform from gaining traction?

Those states in which felons are disenfranchised have the most inhumane prison systems.

[Changenow]

10. It becomes clear when you

knock on doors to register voters. Because of the "war on drugs" in some neighborhoods an overwhelming portion of the population is ineligible. Think of it as a modern version of a property requirement, it keeps the riffraff from expressing their views.

Not every state prohibits it, but you can look at a map and make a pretty good guess about which ones do.

[Real_Talk]

13. Too easy to be a felon these days.

With the ease that one can become a felony, their is no reason that all felons should have permanent loss of rights.

[Xithras]

14. Same issue as the argument against college students voting.

The courts have ruled that college students have a right to vote in the town containing their college, even though they aren't permanent residents. Even their temporary residency is sufficient to grant voting privileges. The problem is that many prisons are located in smaller towns, and that giving prisoners the right to vote would actually give the prisoners a tremendous amount of leverage over the politics of the towns surrounding the prisons. The town of San Quentin, as an example, has about 12,000 people in it. The prison in that town has over 5,000 prisoners. The prisoners would have the power to swing local elections if they wanted. Another example is Delano, also in California. The state has saddled that town of 50,000 with not one but TWO state prisons, with more than 10,000 prisoners between them. Again, the people of those towns have a genuine fear that the prisoners would drive local politics if given a vote.

Keep in mind that their fear isn't entirely unfounded. There are many examples in American history, mostly from the old west, of criminals "taking over" towns. When a town became known as a haven for criminals, even more would flock there. They'd eventually become the voting majority, vote in law enforcement officials willing to look the other way (heck, in some towns the sheriff was a criminal too), and legalize everything under the sun. Most of our anti-felon voting laws can be traced back to that period of history.

[Ian_rd]

15. It's a Jim Crow law that remains

State laws preventing ex-felons from voting became popular after blacks won the right to vote by Constitutional Amendment. These laws are simply one of the work-arounds (like the poll tax and grandfather clauses) practiced by state governments to suppress the black vote by other means. Traditionally, blacks are more subject to arrest and conviction through a disproportionate application of law in the United States, which results in net harm of black voting power.

[raincity_calling]

16. Yep, vote suppression

"I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down." -- Paul Weyrich, conservative political strategist, founder of Heritage Foundation

[Ian_rd]

18. Wow, that's a dynamite quote.

[HEyHEY]

17. In Canada you can vote IN prison

Though, I don't think it should be allowed. After you've paid your debt, fine, your rights should be re-instated. However, during repayment I don't think you should be able to vote.

[TechBear_Seattle]

23. Why should felons in prison be barred from voting? n/t

[LostInAnomie]

19. It's a means to disenfranchise that is way to convenient to ever repeal.

Taking away the rights of felons keeps the very people the rich and powerful want out of the voting booth out. Any politician that would try to have this overturned would be labeled "soft on crime" and would be unelectable.

The only national level politician I've ever heard even mention this was Howard Dean.

[bdf]

22. Racism and desire for political power.

As others have noted, racism is a prime motivator for this. Even in the north, vestiges of racism persist. I say "vestiges" not because what remains is justifiable (it isn't) or tolerable (it isn't) but because it's not quite as bad as it was. That racism leads to African-Americans in general getting a poorer education, lowering their earning power. Even those who somehow manage to get a good education are discriminated against. In the south it tends to be a lot worse. As a result of all that, African-Americans commit a disproportionate percentage of crime simply to survive. This disparity is greatly magnified by the tendency of (white) cops to pick on blacks when looking for perps and to ignore whites.

Because of all that, African-Americans are more likely to have a criminal record. They're also more likely to be poor, and therefor more likely to vote Democratic than Republican. Which makes barring felons from voting an excellent for the GOP to retain majorities in states where it would otherwise lose massively.

There are compelling reasons why felons should be allowed to vote. Sometimes legislators pass laws that the populace in general deem unacceptable. The politicians say they're elected every 4 years so the pubic can repeal those laws by electing the opposition party. Having to wait up to 4 years to repeal an unjust law is itself an unjustice. In any case the opposition party may have no desire to repeal that law either (but may lie about their desires in order to get elected). And therefore arises the concept of "jury nullification." The jury is entitled to find a defendent not guilty even though the facts of the case show that (s)he committed the crime. They can do so at whim, but usually do so for one of two compelling reasons: the law may be totally unacceptable to any but those in power and can never be anything but unjust if applied; or the law is broadly correct but failed to consider the special circumstances that apply in this particular case.

One reason why the catastrophic "War on Drugs" continues is that early on, when juries were frequently using jury nullification because they felt it should not be a crime to sit around with the munchies giggling, the US decided that judges should no longer permit juries to be informed that jury nullification was possible. It still is possible but the judge won't let defense counsel say so, which means pot smokers are usually convicted. Which means that pot smokers go to prison and end up being unable to vote, which reduces the numbers of people who can vote for a political candidate who vowed to end the "War on Drugs."

Juries were originally conceived of when justice was dispensed by the lord of the manor. He not only judged the case he defined the law in the first place. He was in a position to define an unjust law or to render an incorrect verdict or both. The jury countered both possibilities: the jury would vote "not guilty" if it was clear that the defendent had not committed the crime, no matter how much the lord of the manor wanted the defendent to be found guilty. The jury would also vote "not guilty" if the defendent had committed that which he was accused of but that the act should not be considered a crime.

Ignore the counter-arguments. It will not change the outcome if a few child molesters in prison are permitted to vote - they might vote for some fringe candidate who campaigns to make child-molesting legal but nobody else will. The only times the vote of felons and ex-felons will make a difference will be when the margin is small or the prison population is large. If the margin is small the felons and ex-felons deserve to be counted because they too have to live here. If the prison population is large then the social conditions and/or the laws are flawed.

The US has one of the largest percentages of prisoners in the world. Ahead of many countries we consider repressive and who routinely imprison dissidents on trumped-up charges. The majority of those prisoners did nothing worse than get the munchies and giggle a lot.

[lame54]

25. Apartheid

[lame54]

24. They can't vote but they can apparently hold office