Brad, having grown up in Minnesota. I will answer it as it was basically explained to me way back when I was in grade school.

If you were convicted of a felony, the loss of the right to vote was one of the prices someone paid for their actions, and it would serve as a constant reminder to that person not to break the law again. Which then transforms to... Why should someone who has proven how barbaric they can be by killing someone, or scamming HUGE amounts of money be treated the same as someone like you or I (even if they did complete their sentence)? If someone can't follow the basic tenets of our society why should that person be allowed to participate?

I am not saying it's right or wrong, it's just how it was explained to me when I was a kid.

I am actually very conflicted on how I feel about it. I understand your reasoning, and it makes a lot of sense. Why should we dis-enfranchise someone who has paid their debt to society? We want that person to be a productive, contributing member of society, don't we? I know I do. But I just can't get past the fact that even though someone else committed serious crimes that affect others far beyond the basics of the crime itself, they will still be afforded the same rights I have even though I have done no wrong.

Seems a prison term isn't the extent of a debt to society anymore. We are never willing to do what it takes to mitigate resort to felonies, and as they and the prison recidivism rates increase, so does our resolve to increase the debt, which increases the crime, which increases the debt, which ... If fixing it means using our heads and our hearts, which it does, as sure as the sun rises in the East, we won't.

99,

I don't believe prison has ever been the extent of ones debt to society. Parole, half-way houses, restitution, and restrictions on when and where a person can go are just a few of the examples of additional "debt" a convict pays beyond prison... A Scarlet Letter comes to mind too if we feel like going back in time.

Your right though, our justice system has many flaws, and the ones who are capable of making changes focus primarily on punishment and not nearly enough on the root causes.

Back to the original point though... Instead of thinking that the loss of voting rights is a punishment for a felon, what about the belief that having and maintaining the right to vote is the reward for not being one?

EVERYONE should be able to vote. After all, don't we want people to be invested in a crime-free society, understand laws, rights and responsibilities, and see the benefit in acting in a way to preserve the society?

What better way to do that than by providing in-prison civic lessons and then reinstituting the right to vote as a reward for completing the lessons successfully ...

Why not encourage people to vote from prison once they've had that right restored? After all, isn't that the kind of behavior we would like to see once they're released?

Call me a pushover, but too many "felons" are in for their drug problems, or their skin color problems, and then there are those who followed their dicks into the supremely ill-advised, but not completely out of the question zone... stuff like that. The case in point is some testosterone-for-brains who may well not have traumatized his victim very much at all... so he can't grow up and be a full citizen?

And, yes, if you get out on parole before serving your full sentence, there are still restrictions, meant, I think, to ensure they can make you finish your sentence if you screw up. If you've done your time, you are supposed to have put paid to your mistake.

Or that's what I was taught, and that doesn't seem so, well, so totalitarian, so fascist, as to strip you of your citizenship rights for being someone who ran afoul of the law. Why go along with those who want the workforce as impotent as possible anyway? Taking someone's vote is effectively turning them into a non-citizen.

The point about the legal system we are SUPPOSED to have is that Americans value justice, equality, due process, the Constitution and freedom over punishing somebody. We're big enough to deal with somebody getting off easy so that none of us need fear injustice from our justice system. Let's get back to that please. Nowadays we seem to be making it easier and easier to put people in the slammer without actual due process and keeping them in collars thereafter.

It's not okay to make voting a "reward" for staying out of trouble. If you're a citizen, you get to vote. Period.

There's that kid in Utah who went in and bid up a bunch of drilling leases to prevent more decimation of our environment for cold monetary profit alone. He threw a wrench in *'s cynical ploy to do more giveaways before he leaves. Should he pay for the next fifty or sixty years for saving our butts the only way he could?

Even if it's gangbangers and thugs, this merciless censure and injustice is the kind of stuff that makes them that way to begin with and keeps them that way after they've done their time.

What I don't understand is that they want citizens that have done their time to continue to be locked into a system where they cannot get a job or vote...What are they suppose to do for money besides turn back to crime?
Maybe mandatory continuing education for a sentence would do some good?...pfeh, what am I saying?, that might make some sense.

Plus, I think pretty soon we will be seeing an uptick in crime... from people we never thought would stoop so low. Putting food on your family and keeping a roof over your head is going to be --- pfeh, is already --- beyond the capacity of too many. Turning tricks and dealing dope and burglaries and even armed robberies are apt to be booming.

It's pretty clear to me that neither major party wants anyone who is poor or homeless or disabled or old to vote. They're disenfranchising them every single way they can think of already, and I think this taking away your voting rights for a felony is just a shortcut they take where they can.

There are two ways to get it away from the plutocrats: with votes and with massive protest. They're yanking our votes and putting the freakin' military on the streets. And they're hauling people to jail like it's an industry or something....

Nope. I've been thinking about it for a few hours. If this were the regular sane America I was brought up believing in, I'd go along with losing your vote while you're in the joint, but it's not and if most of the people in jail and who have been in jail were voting, we'd have something more like our country back... and less people going to jail for diddly... for protesting outside the protest zone... for arguing with a cop... for being someone they don't want somewhere... for being poor and optionless... for being strung out... for being a Muslim... for going for whatever was available to keep alive....

Poor George, his retirement must not be going so well, he is shilling for Rick Berman collecting some of that wingnut welfare [on] the Employee Free Choice act.
Either that or Berman got to him on this issue.

Oops, maybe "for" should be "against" the employee free choice act?

[ed note: I changed it to "on" since we are somewhat in the dark here. --99]

I don't think so, Flo. The Employee Free Choice Act is about union busting. Newspeak.... Very disorienting.

Voting. A interesting notion in an interesting time of vote suppression. 20 Million votes weren't counted the last eight years by the despots of partisan BOE's. And you have a qualm with a "felon" voting?
This is a country founded by people looking to get away from despots and tyrants and many of us have turned into what we detest. Voting is for anyone that can breath, drool, bat an eyelid, or utter some definitive that a caregiver can act for them, over eighteen years old and born in this country. What the States were given was to manage the process and the ability to be the Best Jim Crows ever. Poll Taxes are okay. Bigotry = okay. Gerrymandering = okay. Discrimination in everyway to rationally suppress voting is okay. It takes Amendments to overcome the Outrages in the voting scene, large and small. It makes the Stalinists proud to see what the current level of "lost" or "uncounted" have reached.
Worried about felons, huh? In some states a felony can be a misdemeanor or vice versa. So, the bigotry of laws when handed to a bunch of legalese thugs becomes the tools of suppression.
Nope. Everyone has a right to vote over the age of 18 and born in this country even if they are criminals, presently in jail or not, because they are paying their time in the current Prisons for Profit or Privatization of Rehabilitation. The Warehousing of Human Bodies has reached a level unrivalled in the modern world in this country. What a legacy.
Without the ability for everyone to offset the tyranny beset by a zealous government of self rightous thuggery, citizens (and a criminal is still a citizen} lose their voice against the corrupt. We must come to a place of consistent balance in voting and counting those votes in ALL states and among ALL citizens over the age of 18 years. There is no room in my thinking and understanding for the excuses meted out by partisan slander. This is OUR country, not the domain of the Lawgiving despots and corrupt Codifiers. Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness or of Health less than adequate, Enslavement and loss of all privacy, and oppression/depression forever guaranteed?
The personal testimonies of disabled and persons of color, or folks with weird names, or funny notions, having had their votes not counted are in every instance that I have seen and heard, the witnessing and victims of a crime. Somehow noone seems to pay for that criminal act. Very few wind up in jail. Often for thousands of "purges" or "cagings" or clearing the voter rolls. Timothy Button....too obvious and too true. Without his presence, moneyed clout and in your face courage, the corruption that is all too evident in our election systems and ALL our collapsed institutions and agencies would be bourne by apathy or outrage?
The Vote is more than important. It is the Voice
of our eternal hope for a better world. And everyone that fits the Constitutional measure is a voice that must be heard. Time to come together more than ever. Aloha oi, F. Buckley Lofton, Kailua-Kona, Hawai'i

It, Flo, actually looks as though Berman might be on the right side of this issue... or Sourcewatch worded that badly....

Additional point:
Voting is a Right. As in Civil Right. Not a Privilege open to those that have "earned" it or "paid their debt to society." Or have bought land. Or any other issue of measure to discriminate. Unless you believe you can buy your way into heaven?

I happen to agree with you on this one.

Easy 99... We're both basically on the same side here.

Brad's 5th paragraph asked why a felon shouldn't be allowed the same voting rights as a non-felon. As someone who went through the MN school system, I attempted to explain it as it was taught to me in the 70's. Go back and read my post about it, I didn't say I thought it was right or wrong. I was only conveying what I was taught about the reasoning behind it. (Don't shoot the messenger.)

Like I said, I am conflicted about it. Largely for the reasons both you and I listed. I think your right about your point of the majority of jailed felons are associated with drug convictions and a variety of other factors, and I don't have a problem with someone like that being able to vote. The kid in the story? I feel a bit bad for him (even though he seems kinda stupid) and agree he shouldn't be the type to lose the right to vote. But what about someone like Bernie Madoff (if he is convicted)? What about a serial tax evader? How about Ollie North? Scooter Libby? What about if they were able to convict Bush or Cheney on something? What about a person who intentionally kills someone?

The kid in Utah? More power to him! I don't consider civil disobedience much of a crime.

My points were mainly to be devils advocate and to explain why I am conflicted about it. Not to try and get under your skin.

Oh, and thank you for correcting my formatting error.

Billman

I'm not fighting with you. I just have this declarative way of talking and it sounds that way to some people. I took this opportunity to think through my feelings on the matter. Sorry if you were feeling bludgeoned by it. Maybe something I said will give you something to chew on as you try to settle your conflicts.

We are suffering from an overactive spam filter gland at the Brad Blog of late, and you were just another innocent victim a minute ago. I'm glad I caught it quickly or you might have gotten the wrong idea. Sorry if you found your comment missing for a moment there.

Flo

The deal breaker is that the union authorization cards under this Act would not be secret. If the employers know what's hitting them and who's for it, that's it for those people in the vast majority of cases. No language about recourse for the unjustly fired can keep them safe either. We've been there and done that. The ballots [the union authorization cards] have to be secret. The whole thing was cooked up so the Dems could sound pro-labor, for sure because ain't nobody pro-labor going for the non-secret card.

I think the union leaders are so cowed and/or bought off by big business now that they don't give a damn how badly workers are screwed. There's a never-ending supply of more workers to "unionize" and it seems to me that it's really only amounting to collecting dues from wherever they can get them, and not working so well for the supposedly unionized. I'm using broad strokes here, expressing what seems to be the general sweep.

I think that's how McGovern and Berman can be on the same side of an issue. McGovern doesn't want fake unions and Berman doesn't want any unions at all.

I think McGovern is wrong so I'll have to go ahead and side with labor on this. If the system is abused they can go back later and fix the finer points, there is no excuse to be against this except to kick the workers in the teeth again IMO

Perhaps the only citizens we should consider taking the vote away from are those who are in positions of authority to count or certify the vote and who willfully miscount vote, gerrymander the results, or deny the right to vote to a legal voter, either racially motivated or to the predetermined benefit of one particular candidate.

Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell in particular come to mind.

A while back Illinois considered not wearing a seat belt a felony offense. Don Seigleman and Bearnie Madoff are two good reasons that the justice/legal system is too trashed to matter. Felons need to vote so we can help put the country back together. They probably know who the real criminals are.

I think its ok for the right to vote to be taken from convicted felons, however I think that they should be able to petition the court to have that right re-instated should they want to pursue it.

In the petition, the ex-con would have to describe to the court the manner in which they have become a participating member of society, acknowledge what they did was wrong, and explain how having the right to vote is of personal importance to them.

That would take care of 99% of convicts, who wouldn't bother, and would still allow leeway for people like the guy in Utah or other 'political resistance' criminals to still vote.

For the guy in question, in many states he could have legally married a 15 year old. Now explain the logic of his crime. 20 to 15 is a fairly big gap, but think of how many 18yr olds have had sex with their 17 or 16 yr old GF or BF. I've always thought that law was kind of 'arbitrary' (esp because men have been drafted to fight and die for their country as young as 16, but omg sex is completely out of the question).

Some interesting statistics.

Nationwide about 13% of the African-American male population has lost the right to vote because of felony convictions.

A total of 5.3 million people nationwide are denied the right to vote because of a felony conviction in their past.

Arizona, Iowa, Kentucky, and Nebraska disenfranchise more than 20 percent of their African-American voting-age population. The League of Women Voters statistics are that 1 in 4 African Americans in Kentucky can't vote because of prior felony convictions. Over 15% of the African American population can't vote in Virginia, which is even more significant because AAs make up a bigger percentage of the population in Virginia than Kentucky (20% vs. 6%)

I found a very interesting map of the states with felony disenfranchisement laws. It closely parallels the red and blue states, with the blue states, by and large, having the least restrictions, and the red states having the most. The highest concentration of disenfranchisement laws are in the Southeast. States that ban felons from voting unless the government restores their rights are VA, KY, TN, MS, AL, FL, AZ, NV, WY.

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, felony disenfranchisement laws got going after the Civil War as part of the Jim Crow laws to keep freed slaves from voting, so their original purpose was to skew the vote in favor of the former slavemasters, not to punish felons. Considering where these laws are and who is affected by them, that still seems to be the ulterior motive for these laws.

Flo, since we're kinda OT, here, I'll keep it short. I would have seen it the union leaders' way until I was forced to take a look at what has happened to them by the scarily sentimental bullshit of one particular West Virginian. They have morphed into something too radically much more acceptable to big business in the last two or three decades. And there ain't a thing wrong with fixing that secret ballot provision before they pass it.

I could see stripping the right to vote from a felon serving their term in prison. But to strip that right in perpetuity? I say that's cruel and unusual punishment.

We should all understand that the real gist of this kind of law is to get felons off the rolls because felons as a population are a higher percentage black and therefore higher percentage Democratic voters.

Felons where I live (Oregon) are allowed to votes once they are released from prison. I agree with this law. The Oct 27, 2008 issue of the LA Times posted an article by Cynthia Dizikes about this, entitled, More felons gaining right to vote
At least a dozen states have changed their laws since 2003 to allow offenders no longer in prison to regain the right to vote.
I don't know if links are allowed here, but it can be easily googled.

One problem with discussions of "felons" voting is that there is no standard definition of what is a "felon." For instance: I believe there are still laws on the book in Virginia (where I live) making it a felony for a husband and wife for some sexual relations that are VERY common. As a result, MOST sexually-active Virginians have committed felonies.

J. Rae,
Indeed, links are not only strongly encouraged here, but folks in large number will actually READ them.

We love to source, re-source, double-triple-check source and confirm source independently. Links are gleeful things.

Jeanne Dean

Thanks for the info. Here's the link for my post above:

http://articles.latimes....oct/27/nation/na-felon27

Interestingly, this article points out that these states led by Repulican Govs: Alabama, Nebraska, Nevada and Florida - recently changed their laws to allow felons to vote.

Therefore, this article contradicts the statistics posted by Paul McCarthy above. How old are your NV stats Paul?

Correction to my last post:

http://articles.latimes&...oct/27/nation/na-felon27

The article only states that the Republican Govs of Alabama, Nebraska, Nevada and Florida "have loosened their voting rules" for felons. What that means for each state would have to be researched.

I think that it would be an interesting study to see just how many felons there are in the United States that have served their time. With every election, there is always the story of how many people are registered to vote, and both sides of the political arena whats more people to vote. It makes me wonder just what percentage of the population is of voting age and can't vote because they were convicted of a felony. I'm sure that politics at every level of government would be impacted by allowing felons that have served their time the right to vote. It is entirely posible to have someone that was convicted of a felony in the 1930's and have not been able to vote for nearly eighty years might have something to say. I've heard for the last twenty years that every vote counts, how about we make it so that is a true statement and allow everyone who is 18 years or older and is a citizen the right to vote period. I'm not advocating crime, just human rights.

"...For Coleman...So Never Mind... "

So what, if he voted for the other guy you would give a shit? It would only matter if it fit in with your political agenda? Why even post the story? Dumb motherfucker.