I disagree. But it appears I didn’t make my previous response clear enough.
I pointed out the comparison to being convicted of a crime. An individual can be charged and tried for particular crimes they were alleged to have committed and may be found guilty of the crimes. That person can’t argue “You can’t convict me of this crime because there are other people who are committing the same crime and those people haven’t been caught and convicted. So it’s unfair to single me out when they’re out there free.”
Our legal system isn’t based on the principle that perfection is required. We deal with individual cases separately to the best of our abilities while acknowledging that some cases slip by the system.
The same principle applies to losing voting rights. If we have justifiable grounds for taking away an individual’s voting rights, that individual cannot argue that he should be allowed to keep his voting rights because there are other people who haven’t been found out but are equally unfit.
This principle is not absolute. The individual in question might have a valid argument that he was treated unfairly if he can demonstrate that his conviction and the freedom of others were not the effect of random luck but were the result of a pattern of targeting some people for investigation while not targeting others. But while I acknowledge this argument exists, it doesn’t seem to be the argument you’re making.
In a typical small southern county, at least half the county jail “inmates” are either waiting unconvicted (up to year) in lieu of bail for a trial, or are serving months for driving licence offenses, if black. Have these citizens voluntarily chosen to be outside the “social contract”? Just because they couldn’t afford to put a new sticker on their plate? Do they get to vote?.
I’m not the one you asked, but. . . Unconvicted people are supposed to get to vote under current law (which I agree with). And it should be made much, much easier.
And no, people serving time for petty offenses should not be disenfranchised either. Also, jail is over used for a lot of those kinds of offenses, and egregiously so in some parts of the country.
Too late to edit, but I don’t think any state legally deprives people convicted of misdemeanor “driving license” offenses of the right to vote. As a practical matter, though, I’m sure many or even most jails make it too hard to be able to vote, which is a problem that should be remedied. Only a few States include misdemeanors at all, and then only specific ones, or specific categories, like bribery offenses, or elections offenses.
Not officially. I had to provide my last address in the U.S. and my social security number or a state issued ID number. And the state ballot is only good for federal offices. I can’t vote for the mayor or governor. Just the president, two senators and my representative.
An “overseas voter” is a voter who is living outside of the United States and who was residing in New Jersey immediately prior to departure.
Note:The overseas voter need not have been registered to vote in New Jersey prior to going outside of the United States, but must have been domiciled in New Jersey and have possessed the qualifications to register and vote in New Jersey.
The 13th Amendment says that involuntary servitude can be imposed on somebody when they have been convicted of a crime. It’s a standard portion of a prison sentence.
The 15th Amendment says that a person cannot be denied the right to vote based on a previous condition of servitude.
So combine the two amendments. If servitude is part of a prison sentence and a person is denied the right to vote because he served a prison sentence, then isn’t that making his previous condition of servitude the basis for denying him the vote?
No, because the involuntary servitude and the disenfranchisement are both based upon the conviction of a crime. They aren’t being denied the right to vote because they’re slaves. They’re being denied the right to vote because they’re criminals, and they are also slaves because they’re criminals.
I don’t agree with your argument. The Constitution explicitly states that involuntary servitude can be imposed as a sentence; it does not state that disenfranchisement can be imposed as a sentence. So right away, the two punishments are different.
And then the Constitution goes on to explicitly say that while involuntary servitude can be imposed as a punishment, it cannot subsequently be used as the basis for imposing disenfranchisement.
The 14th Amendment does. It says that states that disenfranchise adult male citizens should be punished by the removal of a proportionate amount of representation in the House of Representatives (not that this was ever enforced), but that provision has an exception for those adult male citizens who are disenfranchised because of “participation in rebellion, or other crime.” Why would Congress have proposed this implicit approval of felony disenfranchisement in 1866 and then hidden an abstruse repeal of that approval in an amendment proposed just three years later?
In any case, I know of no state where having been in prison in the past is what results in disenfranchisement.
There are only cases 2 cases where it’s morally appropriate to disenfranchise someone:
When they stop being a mentally sound US citizen
If they are found to vote fraudulently, or help someone else vote fraudulently.
If they are convicted of treason against the US.
This is important because disenfranchising the convicted makes civil disobedience an artificially expensive form of protest. You can peacefully break the law to highlight how unjust it is, but your cost is losing your freedom and losing the right to vote against that law. That’s excessive punishment that is designed to maintain the injustice in the system. Committing a crime isn’t a declaration of refusal to be governed. It’s not a declaration of anything.
Considering what we do to our prisoners, annihilating someone’s political expression is just a bridge too far. The purpose of incarceration is to protect ourselves, to exact retribution, and maybe squeeze a little restitution and rehabilitation out of it. That’s sufficient, we don’t need to take away their right to politically express their beliefs about the system they’re in.
Well, those are three cases. And even then, I question the idea of disenfranchising someone for not being “mentally sound.” Who is going to be the judge for that? Any chance it’s decided in a racist manner?
This. All of this. The three specifics listed should be in every state’s constitution.
When we have true justice in this country, then maybe I’ll buy into the “broken the social contract” bullshit that gets spread around in these threads.
I don’t disagree with your logic, but you are off factually. Only a few states disfranchise for misdemeanors, and even then, only for more serious ones, or ones related to elections fraud and similar offenses, as discussed above.
So, by my definition of civil disobedience, it would seldom result in disfranchisement, because the offenses most often associated with peaceful protest are misdemeanors.
It is true that it could come into play for things like challenging the anti-homosexual-sodomy laws, some of which were felonies. (See Bowers v. Hardwick). A person can set themselves up to be arrested for such an offense in order to challenge the law (although that’s not what happened in Bowers, or in the later challenge to the misdemeanor charge in Lawrence v. Texas). I’m against disfranchisement generally, with some limited exceptions. To the extent that peaceful protests can lead to disfranchisement, that’s another good reason to not do it, but I think it’s a rather weak argument as a primary reason.
I’m lean away from extending the right to vote while in prison. My rationale is that someone who is in prison is having their citizenship repaired and improved. They have fundamental human rights, but not the same rights as a citizen.
But even if you’re on parole, my thought is that if we can trust people enough to be out in public, then we can trust them to manage themselves in a responsible manner. Parole officers can still check in on them to see how that process of integration is coming along, but there is no reason why someone who’s released from prison shouldn’t be allowed to vote.
The right of citizens… to vote shall not be denied… on account of… previous condition of servitude.
The (as an example) Florida constitution says:
No person convicted of a felony, or adjudicated in this or any other state to be mentally incompetent, shall be qualified to vote or hold office until restoration of civil rights or removal of disability. Except as provided in subsection (b) of this section, any disqualification from voting arising from a felony conviction shall terminate and voting rights shall be restored upon completion of all terms of sentence including parole or probation.
Disenfranchisement happens upon conviction. The 15th amendment only says that disenfranchisement on the basis of previous slavery is unconstitutional. If I commit a felony and somehow avoid jail time, I still lose my right to vote until I’ve completed whatever the other terms of my sentence are.
Can you point to any states that specifically base disenfranchisement on having been in jail rather than basing it on the conviction of a crime?
Do any prisons have mandatory and formal citizenship reparation and improvement courses? Or do we just sort of throw people in shitholes and hope it teaches them to act right?
OTOH, many states hand out bullshit felonies like racist lollipops, and then delay and obstruct when someone tries to get their rights restored. In some cases states will “accidentally” go back and re-purge these people from the voting rolls, requiring them to go through the reinstatement process again.
That is, for the vanishingly small bunch of felons who emerge from the system without being absolutely broken and disillusioned by it.
Felon disenfranchisement has no other purpose than to deprive people of votes by selective law enforcement. That’s the entire thing.