Wasn’t there some kerfuffle when a native American woman gave Hillary Clinton a dream catcher she had made and it had some eagle feathers and thus was an illegal object? IIRC nothing came of it except conservative bitching.
No, it’s a very bad thing. A system that allows a flagrant thug like Trump to gain the powers of the presidency is a system that’s a danger to the well-being of all Americans and to democracy itself. The reason the framers of the Constitution didn’t put in a felony exception is I suspect the same reason that they didn’t put in a disqualifying exception for a drooling simpleton completely bereft of any useful knowledge who could barely speak – it never occurred to them that it would be necessary.
Know what did occur to them as necessary? That the candidate be a natural-born citizen, to avoid any risk that the president might have even the tiniest bit of residual loyalty to a foreign power. Yet Americans are set to elect a pathological liar, cheat, rapist, and a convicted felon with the ethics of a nocturnal rodent who is also the personal lapdog of America’s greatest and most powerful enemy, who treats top secret documents with careless impunity and apparently shared secrets with Russian officials in the Oval Office.
Does all that seem right to you? It has come to pass based on the presumption that in a democracy voters should have the ultimate say, yet it may result in the crippling of democracy itself because around half of American voters are partisan low-information imbeciles.
I seriously doubt this would ever result in charges, much less a conviction. The courts really do have better things to do, and they generally do embrace the concept of “common sense”.
The title just says “committed” a felony, not convicted of one, so that’s irrelevant.
Regardless, the problem with this and so many other laws is that they can be used selectively.
Do you think that we should just make everything illegal, and let the courts use “common sense” to determine what is actually prosecutable?
Being Canadian, at that point I’d be voting strategically, to produce a minority government, of whatever party is most likely to get that. It’s one of the strengths of the Parliamentary system: We’re not all-or-nothing.
Put the Liberals or NDP in with a minority government, but make it clear that we expect them to ditch the felon if they want a majority. Similarly with the CPC and PP, although they are a tougher nut to crack.
But it’s kind of unrealistic: In Canada, it’s much easier for us to ditch a bad leader, even in the immediate run-up to an election. Let’s not forget the Ontario election when Patrick Brown got accused of some stuff, and so the PC party dumped him for Doug Ford. Even with that mess, the PCs went on to win the election.
Pulling that Federally would be more difficult, but not impossible.
I think it was because the country they were trying to separate from very much used the law/courts to get rid of political enemies.
The simpleton thing you are probably right about. They probably didn’t think such a thing could ever happen (also, when you get into it, such a thing would be very difficult to specify…when you look at the constitution it is very concise).
I can’t speak for the OP but I understood it to mean charged, tried, and convicted. Otherwise as you point out yourself, laws as written can be stretched to the point that every one of us has probably at some points in our lives committed a felony according to some interpretation of some laws, even if we didn’t even realize it. Whether we would vote for such a person isn’t an interesting question and is probably not the question the OP intended.
That’s a ridiculous straw man. The concept of “common sense” has a perfectly valid meaning in law. It means that silly charges are not brought, and courts don’t waste time with them if they are.
And yet, according to the cite above, 70% of people have committed a crime that could result in jail. And that’s almost certainly an underestimate, not least because it includes a bunch of young adults that haven’t had enough time to commit an inadvertent crime. The number is obviously higher if you consider an entire lifetime.
That’s still not the same as making everything illegal, and yet the net result is the same for anyone in danger of persecution–whether for political reasons, or they’re a minority, or because they have unpopular ideas.
I don’t think that’s a thing here in the US. I don’t mean this snarkily–I just haven’t heard that ever used to reject a case. We do have the notion of a “reasonable person” in some cases, like exercising judgment in self-defense. But not “common sense”. Maybe a Canadian thing?
Strict liability (which applies to many US laws) is essentially the exact opposite of a common sense approach. It says that the beliefs and/or knowledge of the person is of no relevance whatsoever. The only thing that matters is if they violated the law as written.
I don’t mean that the phrase “common sense” necessarily appears in any statute, only that in practice it’s exercised all the time in legal proceedings. Such as, for example, trying to get a traffic ticket thrown out because the police officer spelled a street name slightly wrong. But it also works the opposite way.
I have no experience of criminal courts and in fact not even traffic court, but I did at one time object to two traffic tickets I got simultaneously from a cop who had just decided to be a jerk. I was sufficiently pissed off that I decided to fight it. Both tickets were technically correct – yes, I had done those things – but there were good and valid reasons that I did them.
It never went to trial but I had a pre-trial meeting with the prosecutor and explained why the tickets were just inappropriate under the circumstances. The prosecutor agreed. One of the charges was thrown out, but the prosecutor didn’t have the power to completely throw out the other charge without going to trial, so instead it was reduced to something basically inconsequential. Then we met with a judge in his office and he signed off on the deal to make it official. Based on explaining the circumstances. “Common sense.”
This isn’t necessarily all based on the idea of being nice to offenders, although there’s kind of a Canadian element to that. It’s more based on not wasting the court’s time with stupid trivialities.
ETA: I see that this is in P&E, I thought it was the Pit. So perhaps enough of this digression. To reiterate my point re the OP, in the general case I would never vote for a convicted felon (in Canada, that would be “someone convicted of a criminal offense under federal criminal law”) but there would be rare exceptions if the law in question was stupid and especially if it had subsequently been repealed. I’m pretty sure that the Canadian Prime Minister that I voted for and will do so again probably smoked pot in his youth when it was still a criminal offense. Doesn’t concern me in the least. A lifelong thug like Trump who had finally been held accountable would concern me a great deal, and would make voting for said thug completely off the table.
As parenthetically observed by the OP, in this democracy on the far side of the puddle the chnces that I will ever have the option of voting for the leader of my preferred party is a rather long shot … about 150-1.
As to whether I would vote for a candidate in my electorate is their party leader was a convicted felon; if egregious I’d expect I’d change my preferences.
The list of Australian elected politicians who have been convicted of a crime before, during or after their term in office isn’t a long read. There are a couple of murders, but mostly drink driving, fraud or misappropriation.
A couple of high/low lights:
Bill Groom was convicted of theft and transported TO Australia. 
Chuck Kingston was convicted of duelling.
Don Grant was sentenced to 15 years for conspiracy and sedition before he was elected.
Prime Minister during WWII John Curtin (and one of our top ranked PMs) was convicted for “failing to comply with a compulsory medical examination for conscription” a decade before he sought political office, which probably didn’t seriously hurt his election prospects.
The local candidate I am probably going to vote for in the next Federal election has a leader who I think should be gaolled. But that’s only a personal animosity towards the prick.
I’m in the UK. A party leader with even a sniff of criminal proceedings hanging over them would have been forced out of their role by the party before they ever got to court - see Boris Johnson, Nicola Sturgeon and Jeffrey Donaldson as recent examples.
Yes, that’s the thing about a parliamentary system - one can only vote for a party’s local candidate, rather than its leader. But of course your view of the leader and their team will probably influence your vote - so the party may very well allow the perception of unpopularity to influence them to turf out an unsatisfactory leader, irrespective of judicial processes or the precise legal status of any allegation. Just being “damaged goods” can be enough.
By the same token, national parties usually have vetting processes for candidates’ suitability, and it’s rare for anyone to get near being a leadership candidate in the first place without serving their time in Parliament, with all the exposure that involves.
That seems legit
I know, that’s why I specified to assume they would not drop the leader. Realistically, any national party leader in Canada would be dropped pretty quickly if convicted of a felony.
I meant convicted but if somebody wants to answer relative to committed than can too. I’m not picky. I’m really trying to get to the core of “Would you vote for a felon if you really believed the alternative was awful?” In my case, would I vote for Trudeau/Singh convicted of a felony, since I think PP is really bad. And again, this all stemmed from putting myself in a Republican voter’s position. They really believe that Biden is awful. So while I have zero sympathy for Trump, I started to understand why they might vote for Trump even though he’s a felon.
If Trump were not a criminal, and Biden was convicted of a felony, would you vote Biden?
I didn’t vote, being American, but this is simple to me. I’d still vote Democrat if the roles were somehow reversed. My candidate may be a felonious scumbug, but as long as they are pushing forward the legislation and judiciary I’d like to see, there’s no way I’m voting Republican or even third party. I used to be a vote the person, not the party guy, but I’m the other way around now. The Republican behavior seems completely rational to me, provided I’m interested in moving Republican policies forward.
It was late last night when I made this thread. Really it works for Americans as well. I was originally going to make it “Canadians” but then expanded it. If you’re American, and seeing this, but all means feel free to vote.
If a moderator sees this, can you change the title to remove “Non-Americans”.
I think the contrast of American vs non-American is important. It highlights that this is a nearly-uniquely American problem.
The combination of a well-entrenched two party system, a winner-take all Presidential vote, for a President with substantial powers, and Presidential candidates being selected by a popular vote of a large number of regular citizens, has created a situation in which a convicted felon hasn’t even received the official nomination as his party’s candidate, and yet, no one (and no group of people) have the power to stop him from running. And if he wins, it will be almost impossible to replace him, even with another member of his own party.
Compared to that, places like Canada that use a Parliamentary system have far more robust means for dealing with such people, at almost every stage of that process.
True, but as pointed out, in reality almost any parliamentary system is likely to simply drop the party leader. Unless I suppose public sentiment was like “Heck yeah! Our PM is a felon! Woo!” E.g., like when Chretien faceplanted a heckler, Canadians seemed to mainly like it, whereas conventional wisdom would say the PM getting physical with a heckler would be a bad thing.
I guess I could start another thread.
.
Americans: Would you vote for a felon?
- Yes, without reservation.
- Probably, but it depends on …
- Probably not, but it depends on …
- No, absolutely note.
0
voters
Inspired by my other thread for non-Americans voting for a felon where I try to understand the perspective of Republican voters. Suppose the candidate for your preferred party is a felon. Furthermore, suppose that the other candidates are not felons. For example, Biden is a felon, Trump and RFK Jr. are not felons. Everything else stays the same. Trump still stands for what he stands for, as do RFK Jr. and Biden. In order to remove any other criminality, furthermore assume that J6 did not happen, and that Trump did not steal and refuse to return a bunch of classified documents. In other words, the heart of this question is
Would you still vote for your preferred candidate to promote your agenda of choice (or prevent the agenda of the opposition) even if they were a convicted felon?
Feel free to generalize it more if you wish to be simply about parties and not about particular candidates. This came up because while I was making a snack last night I said to myself “I just cannot imagine voting for a felon. … … … Well, wait a second. Would I if the alternative is the conservative party?” And the conclusion I came to is, unless it were a something like murder or rape, I probably would vote for a felon over the conservative party. I.e., I found myself understanding the perspective of Republican voters that probably dislike Biden more than I dislike Pierre (the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada).
Still no choice for ‘Maybe, but depends on…’.