If you’re actually in jail, it’s almost impossible to vote. There are no polling places in jail, you don’t have much internet if any, you can’t correspond with the Board of Elections, it’s hard to get current information on candidates, and jail administrators often don’t know or care about their authority and responsibility to help inmates vote.
Now combine that with our stupid bail laws. Want to prevent poor people from voting? Just arrest a bunch of them on a bullshit pretext 30 days from the election, then release them for lack of evidence. The system makes voter suppression quite easy, since that’s a big reason it exists.
Oh yes, the system is absolute broken bullshit. No argument here.
The problem I often see is the idea that the system has been perverted from its original intent. It hasn’t been. The founding fathers and enlightenment thinkers who created it were giants in their time but they still didn’t care about much more than wealthy white men.
That’s the insidiousness of “originalist” jurisprudence. You can’t be an originalist and also give a shit about marginalized groups, because the original intent was to marginalize them.
The founding fathers would not be at all scandalized to learn that we do not allow criminals to vote.
At the end of the day, only new amendments will really fix the system. Judicial activism is only a bandage at best because some originalist will come along later and rightfully find some ‘original intent’ reason to reverse it.
I don’t disagree with this in principle, but in practice. Who makes that choice?
If they are capable of making a mark on a piece of paper, or in any way indicating any sort of voting preference, I think we should let them, and if those marks happen to coincide with candidates or issues, then we tally those votes.
They probably won’t be the least informed voter in the election.
The other two, I agree with.
Anyway, as far as voting locally, there was a story a while back about a Sheriff who was giving the prisoners a budget diet, and pocketing the money to buy boats and house renovations. This was apparently legal.
That is a sort of abuse that could be prevented if prisoners could vote on the conditions that they were kept in, and the people who oversee their treatment.
No one cares about anyone who doesn’t vote.
I also question the rationale of saying that someone shouldn’t vote in a place because they won’t be there for very long. That rationale means that people in assisted living, nursing homes, and especially hospice shouldn’t be allowed to vote either.
I too would like to avoid a return to literacy tests and poll taxes, so I’m not totally opposed to this line of reasoning. I could sacrifice that requirement if it turned out to be problematic.
I was thinking to start with obvious sources, such as if the state has any documentation of any mental illness (one bright red flag would be any sign that the state has already declared the person incompetent for other reasons, which could be known via disability filings or custody filings or whatnot. Someone who attempts to vote in a US election as the Queen of England, without proper documentation, is obviously (A) crazy and (B) obviously does not identify as a US citizen, or (C) does not fully understand what US citizenship entails.
In reality I doubt that such a clause would get exercised much, but I feel like for integrity’s sake there should be a mental competence mechanism for extreme cases.
Not that it will change your mind, but I was talking about civil disobedience, not peaceful protest. As in, actually breaking a law and getting arrested and sent to jail to highlight the injustice of it. And the secondary sense of being targeted with contrived charges because of unrelated activism. As in, when MLK was charged with an obscure, seldom-used statute regarding “tax perjury”, he was perilously close to losing his voting rights (he was acquitted).
You may find it weak, but civil disobedience is what moved the civil rights movement forward to where it is today, and disenfranchisement is a disincentive the state wields against people who would call out its wrongdoing.
Yes, I addressed that in my first response to you. It was not clear to me whether you meant breaking a specific law that you find to be unjust, which happens, but not often, and how often is it a felony? Or if you meant civil disobedience as part of a peaceful protest, like being charged with trespassing because of refusing to leave private property as part of a protest to bring awareness to an issue like police brutality. In that type of case, the charges I associate with peaceful protest civil disobedience are all not serious misdemeanors.
I was using “peaceful protest argument” as shorthand, but I can change to “civil disobedience argument.” For clarity, are you referring to the first kind, the second kind, or both?
Mental competency is different than mental illness. Mental competence is decided by a professional, usually a doctor and then has to be confirmed by the court. Anyone who signs their ballot as the Queen of England won’t have their ballot counted anyway. Write ins for Mickey Mouse get recorded all the time-in far greater numbers than attributable to voters with severe mental illness. And, who else than someone receiving mental health services (or more likely not receiving adequate publicly funded services) more needs to be able to vote for the officials making policy and funding decisions about those services?
This would be too fraught with potential for abuse to deny already marginalized persons the right to vote.