Sex Offenders Voting and Taking Their Children to School.

Factual Questions
1

I don’t personally know any sex offenders. But from what I know, many of them have injust and unnecessary burdens placed on them and their lives. I live in Michigan. And as I understand the law (“IANAL”), our system is one-size-fits-all. So you are treated the same whether you are arrested for public urination or molesting a little girl.

My question is simply this: How do you vote if you are a sex offender; and how do you take you children to school? Schools are off-limits to sex offenders in most states. And both require you to go to a school. So what do you do in that situation (if you are a registered sex offender)?

Thank you in advance to all who reply:)

2

I know that in Florida if you are convicted of a felony, you don’t vote anymore. I’m sure that you also wouldn’t have unsupervised custody of a child, either, so whoever was with you could take the child to school.

3

jtgain, that is not necessarily true. You did not automagically get your civil rights restored, however, the ACLU sued, if I remember right, 11 states who handled restoration similar to Florida because well, it violated the civil liberties. They stated that those laws on the books were for the express purpose of preventing blacks from voting. (Jim Crow Laws)

For anyone reading, I don’t know if they won, or what the current status is, however, you may contact your local ACLU and they will aid you in getting your civil rights restored.

Sorry for the hijack, one of my dearest is a convicted felon.

4

They also make you live under a bridge.

5

Assuming you still have the right to vote, you could file an absentee ballot.

6

Not all polling places are in schools. I used to vote at the firehouse, now I vote in a church.

7

Hold the phone…since when are sex offenders allowed to have custody of children in the first place??

8

Being a sex offender does not automatically mean you can’t have custody of your children. Nor does taking them to school require a person to have custody.

9

On a similar note, what happens if a homeowner who lives near a school is convicted of a can’t-be-near-a-school crime? Do they have to move?

10

I just checked our state code, and there is an exception for voting. Additionally, schools are generally closed on the day of polling, presumably for this reason.

11

Doubtful. I believe schools are generally closed on election day because having a large influx of people into a school, while trying to conduct classes, would be too disruptive.

12

Schools don’t close here (TX) on election day.

13

I can’t understand why anyone who claims not to be a racist would make a statement like you quoted. What is the ACLU saying? All blacks or most blacks are convicted felons? I agree that a lifetime voting ban for a felony is a bit harsh, but I can’t see any racial element to it.

Also, I didn’t mean to say that convicted felons can’t have custody of children, I meant that convicted sex offenders, typically as a condition of release, cannot be near minor children (their own or others).

14

Do most people in the USA vote in schools? I don’t think I’ve ever lived somewhere where my polling place was a school. For example, right now, it’s the clubhouse of a housing tract.

15

When I lived in L.A. I usually voted in schools. Once or twice the polling place was in a church.

16

Only once in almost 40 years have I voted in a place that wasn’t a school. I suspect that in a lot of communities, the local school is the only building that can accommodate it. In my town, for example, the town hall is tiny - people waiting to vote would be lined up outside in the parking lot. The gymnasium of the elementary school next door is much more suitable.

I also wonder whether, in some states, it’s even legal to have a polling place in a non-public venue (like your clubhouse example).

17

I should hope it would be allowed in many cases. Sex offender does not always mean violent rapist. In some states, an 18 year old sleeping with a (consenting) 16 year old can be convicted for statutory rape. Sometimes, public indecency counts as a sexual offense, but that can include public urination, not just the stereotyped concept of a creepy flasher. Should someone who streaks at a college football game never be allowed to have children?

IMO, there should be a lot more nuance and care in sex offender laws, especially with registries.

ETA: I’ve voted in schools mostly, but also a public library and a community center.

18

Not in my state. I have to thread my way thru throngs of kids to get to the polling booths.

19

Not in VA they’re not. At least, not in my experience.

20

It was quite common in the South around the time that the Jim Crow laws were passed for sheriffs to go out of their way to make sure that as many young blacks as possible were arrested for felonies. If they couldn’t find something real to arrest them for, they simply made up a crime and lied in court about it. They made sure that they were always convicted for it. Young whites were treated quite leniently in comparison and seldom got convicted for felonies, especially if they were from well-off families. This meant that a much larger proportion of blacks had felony convictions on the books than whites. Furthermore, they probably just ignored the felony convictions when some of those whites came to vote. A fair number of poor whites also ended up not being able to vote because of this, but the people in power didn’t care about them anymore than about blacks.

This is how all the Jim Crow laws worked. You couldn’t actually mention race in any law that kept blacks from doing something. (You could make segregation required, but that didn’t prevent blacks from voting.) You had to create a substitute method by which to distinguish, on average, between blacks and whites. Passing laws against convicted felons voting and then making sure that many more blacks than whites were convicted felons was one was of doing it.