Which Federal officials are we talking about? Surly you don’t mean Representatives or Senators because they’re suppose to represent my state and not the Federal Government. It’s been a while since I took a civics course, but other then the President, I can’t think of any Federal official we elect.
Marc
“Well that’s different”.
“Why is it different, because men are ‘smart’?”
To address the issue of letting prisoners vote, you have to keep in mind that these are individuals in a vulnerable position. The odds of them voting without influence is minimal.
I’m not totally convinced that it would be a problem, or at least, that it would be a problem worthy of restricting what I consider to be a fundamentally important right of being a citizen in a democracy.
What problems do you see arising in a small town if the population of the prison were able to vote?
Good point. Letting people actually vote from prison practically begs for some unscrupulous warden or politician to swing the vote his way.
Vermont and Maine both allow prisoners to vote, and they vote in their last place of residence. (One would presume by absentee ballot.)
I’m going to come squarely down in the middle here. I do not believe that felons in prison, on probation, or on parole should be able to vote. (I used to believe that probationers and parolees should be able to vote. I’ve moved away from that; I want to see evidence of the desire to be a good citizen again, which finishing out the probation or parole provides.) On the completion of the sentence, the restoration of the right to vote should be automatic.
Both the OP and I live in a state which does precisely that, and I’m content with it.
Why stop there? Why not deny them of lifelong rights to free speech and free practice of religion? Why should ex-felons be allowed to speak their mind? Or be allowed to worship in any church at all?
Again, voting has no relation to crime. You might as well bar them from buying ice cream for life.
Easy. Let them vote absentee at their residence at the time of conviction.
:dubious: I want you to think very, very hard about that statement and the assumptions underlying it. And then think some more.
Agreed. Furthermore, while convicts must necessarily be deprived of many of their civil rights as incidents of incarceration, voting is one right we can safely allow them to exercise. We could expect high turnout, too – what else have they got to do?
I think that’s exactly why some people are afraid of the idea. But, once again, it makes sense. Convicts are effectively slaves of the state. Shouldn’t they have some small voice (and an individual vote is a very small voice) in setting the state’s policies?
In practical terms, not a difficult danger to avoid – if you set off one part of the prison as the polling station and let it be manned by poll workers, not prison guards, and let the poll workers enforce ballot secrecy.
I think Der Trihs was referring more to the “undue influence” a warden might have over the prison population … i.e., “vote for my good friend Edgar McCandidate or the guards will report that you’ve been unruly and you’ll spend a week in Solitary…”
But what purpose is served by prohibiting ex- (or current, out on probation) felons from voting? Are you afraid they’re going to make bad decisions? The average, non-felon voter is perfectly capable of doing that, already.
If the ex-felon constituency is sufficiently large enough that they can have a sizeable impact on an election, then maybe that’s enough evidence that they should have an impact on an election.
Personally, I think that ex-felons and those felons who’re currently out on probation should be allowed to vote- in fact, I think they should be encouraged to vote, to try to re-integrate themselves back into society. I don’t think that inmates should be allowed to vote, simply because I see a lot of technical and logistical difficulties in allowing them to cast their ballots. But then, if soldiers can vote from another country, during a war, then maybe those issues can be overcome.
And the same thing, or worse, might be done by a local bully in your town. The secret ballot was invented to prevent that. He can’t take reprisals if he doesn’t know who voted how.
What toadspittle said. I doubt that keeping the ballots secret would work; first, I doubt the inmates would believe it, and second, they’d probably be right. No matter what rules you pass, too many guards would be willing to break them becasue these are criminals, a group we’ve demonized to the hilt.
Let’s try to remember why we let people vote on public policies/officeholders in the first place. It’s not because the republic needs their wisdom – if so, why not weight votes by IQ or academic achievement? It’s not because the republic needs their moral guidance; amoral sociopaths can vote too. It’s because whatever the government decides to do or not to do, everybody has to live with the results, and in that respect we all have an equal interest. And that does apply to felons as much as to anyone.
Put another way: Democracy is not a theory of good government but of legitimate government. It is not based on the assumption that the people know what is best for them. It is based on the assumption that whatever the people want done should be done, for better or for worse. Or, as H.L. Mencken put it, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” And that does apply to felons as much as to anyone.
Here is how we handle letting prisoners vote up here.
Quick question, which I would appreciate an answer to from you please.
Why do you think we currently have a minimum age to vote? After all, if the considerations you mentioned were a primary concern of ours, there would be no reason for a voting age of 18, right?
We do want to encourage civic involvement in these people as well, and some of them are just as capable of bad or good votes as their more mature counterparts. Still, no vote. So there must be another rationale at work.
I think there is a general notion that only people of a certain civic maturity ought to vote. That excludes the very young, of course. And in states that determine such, it may exclude current and former felons as well.
I would guess that it’s because 18 is the age at which a person is no longer considered a minor. That is, they are no longer the legal responsibility of their parents or guardians. As such, they should be able to vote separately from said parents/guardians.
I still have yet to hear any reasonable argument as to why they shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Why does their right to vote have anything to do with the crime they committed? Repeating a point that’s been brought up multiple times in this thread - why the focus on the right to vote, instead of something else, like their right to practice whatever religion they choose?
Well, I think that’s a whole 'nother debate (and falls into the “should an IQ test be required for voting rights” category, IMHO).
LilShieste
This has been mentioned before, but letting them vote from their last known address would be a solution. Or redrawing the boundaries of the city so the Prison itself is not within the city limits. The prison could be an unincorporated area of the county it is in.
I think voting should be an absolute right that all citizens should be able to exercise, even citizens in prison, for this basic reason: As a member of society, I am subject to its laws. It seems fundamentally unfair that I can be subject to the laws of society and yet have zero say in how those laws are made. Even people in insane aslysums should be able to vote if they want to (I doubt many would, but I still don’t see the harm). There’s also the “taxation without representation” aspect.
Disenfranchising felons and ex-cons can result in a “tyranny of the minority” situation. Say 51% of the citizens wished to legalize marijuana (just to use an example, you can substitute anything you think is a bad law). However… that 51% is shrunk to 49% because there’s 2% of ex-cons who can’t vote on the matter. Which means a minority can keep unpopular laws on the books because the people convicted of unjust laws have no say in the matter.