WTF is up with this guy? I mean I’m thankful it’s not an Alabamian for a change but still… Confederacy History Month, the gays, now “one more time” on literacy testing— what’s up next? Poll taxes? Prohibition? Requiring ‘free blacks’ to have white patrons because that law was never repealed? How about a George Lincoln Rockwell’s Birthday celebration since after all he lived and died in Virginia and he can’t have been that bad if he and Alex Haley were buddies* can he? Appoint Dog the Bounty Hunter (who says he wants to be buried in Mt. Vernon’s slave cemetery** so that’s kind of declaring residency) as Attorney General? Or declare Jesus the Lt. Governor?
Anyway, for the OP- I think they should restore the right to vote to criminals EXACTLY the same way they did it before McDonnell was elected. I don’t give a damn about reading a convicted felon’s “What American means to me” essay and neither does anybody else and this is more smoke and mirrors.
*Haley wrote an essay about his long term writing correspondence with Rockwell whom he met when he interviewed him for Playboy. Haley’s take was that Rockwell was a pathetic individual who desperately needed attention and a feeling of power and his Nazi party was how he got it, and that he was ultimately aware his expressed views were full of shit, and in his later letters he drops all pretense of racism. Haley says he pitied him rather than hated him and even came to consider him a sorta kinda friend since once he dropped the racist posturing bullshit he was funny and charming, though he said he was neither surprised nor particularly devastated when Rockwell was killed (the whole “lie down with dogs and…” caveat).
*Dog made this bizarre claim on his apology tour for the famous racist phone conversation, saying he’d been in contact with the “two old ladies who owned” Mt. Vernon (?WTF!?) and said he thought being buried there in an unmarked grave would help atone for his comments. I thought it was a great idea until I realized he meant “Oh, he’s talking about after he dies”, then I thought “Yeah… a long haired white racist who makes his living catching runaways- I can’t think of anyone the slaves would rather share their final resting place with”.
I am frankly amazed that they’re allowed to DENY voting rights to ex-felons. Felons, sure. Ex-felons, preposterous. An EX-felon has, by definition, paid their debt to society and should be allowed to vote like any other citizen.
I gather it goes back to old English law, where a “felony” was any crime that you could be put to death or mutilated(!) for. The theory being that in principle any lesser punishment is by the mercy of whoever sets the penalties for felonies. Or does any provision of US law explicitly overturn that?
I didn’t say that. I don’t really have a strong opinion on it either way. I mean, I have a kind of visceral dislike of exfelons voting in the first place. I’d say that the reason to take away the vote for felons and exfelons is because, by their actions, they’ve shown a contempt for the law and therefore don’t deserve to be full citizens. I’m willing to allow for special case by case exceptions, in the event somebody can show they’ve really turned around their lives and deserve to vote again.
But given that we’ve decided as a society to allow exfelons to get back the franchise, I don’t have a strong opinion as what procedure should be used.
I think the theory that it is about race is that, because of both socioeconomic reasons and systemic racism in law enforcement and the judicial system, blacks in this country are significantly more likely to be convicted of felonies, and so disenfranchising felons has the effect, either intentional or not, of disenfranchising a disproportionate percentage of the black population, and, because of historic racism and past deliberate disenfranchisement of blacks, American society needs to be very careful when doing things that strip blacks of the right to vote.
I think the complaint isn’t so much that blacks commit crimes in disproportionate amounts, but that they get convicted in disproportionate amounts. That’s to say that if you have a black person and a non-black person on trial forthe same sort of crimes, the black person is more likely to be convicted of the crime than the non-black person.
Also, demographically, blacks are more likely to be poor, blacks are more likely to come from single parent homes, blacks are more likely to live in high crime areas, and so on. Now, of course, none of that causes somebody to commit crimes, but there is a correlation between all that and criminality. Our choices are determined in part by our circumstances.
Since a higher percentage of blacks are disenfranchised due to felony convictions it most certainly COULD be about race. It’s an effective way to reduce the impact of the black vote. Since blacks trend strongly towards the Democratic Party it could be about winning elections for the GOP.
But I’m not surprised that Curtis LeMay is in favor of this since I would assume he is in favor of limiting the franchise. Does anyone break the mold?
There was a time and not that long ago when you could make a good career in politics being openly racist- today it’s a career ender due to bad PR and more black voters than ever before, but there are many code words that are used to mean black. Since most prisons have a disproportionate black percentage and the white convicts tend also to be from the poorer classes any comment about “Convicts are sitting up there with free cable” or promising to make life harder for them is seen as a promise to slap ‘white trash’ and blacks. “People taking it easy on welfare” is another (while it’s true blacks are a disproportionate to their population size on the welfare rolls in all states there are more whites than non-whites on public assistance, but the default image is usually to Shirley Q Liquor and her 19 children rather than a white family or a college student with a child). A lot of the outcry over rap lyrics/rappers/etc. is code for young black men.
A personal theory but one that I think has some merit is that the reason so many conservative politicians praise school prayer and talk about how society has gone to hell since school prayer ended is a plucking of racist heartstrings. School prayer ended in the 1960s, about the same time as (though pretty much unrelated to) the integration of public schools, thus “When we had prayer in schools” is also saying “when we had whites only schools”. (Of course the very fact that many of the people who grew up praying in school applauded and joked as water hoses were turned on or scalding coffee poured over the heads of blacks demanding their civil rights- and let’s not forget the more than occasional murder- is a testament to the moral wonders achieved by perfunctory public prayer, but this irony is overlooked.)
The less racist element of praising “school pray’r dayz” is that to people who grew up in the 1960s and before you’re recalling their childhood- the time of life when they didn’t worry about mortgages or grocery bills and their mom bought the Christmas presents they gave and put their name on them- even people from unhappy or poor families have some nostalgia for childhood. But there’s also the race element which I don’t think is coincidental.
Just as with his Confederate History Month, McDonnell is here making a blatant racist throwback. This guy is going to do a lot of damage before he goes down, but I think he’s too nutty to rise any higher and I peg him as a Sejanus. i’m guessing when he goes down it’s going to be a “grab a lawn chair and some popcorn because this is gonna be good”- it’s going to be one of those “not just another woman but 14 year old Vietnamese twins and 3 pounds of crystal meth” type things (not saying it’ll involve either of those things, but it won’t be just your run of the mill sex or financial scandal. It never is with these hardcore fundie racists.
Meanwhile Virginians need to enjoy the attention because Roy “10 Commandments Judge [and former kickboxer]” Moore is running for Governor of Alabama and if he wins (which wouldn’t surprise me) we’ll be reclaiming that “Crazy in Power” belt from you in one gigantic tractor pull as a pre match show of a fight.
Are you trying to suggest that preventing felons from voting is a net boon to the Republicans because felons tend to vote Democrat? Why not just say that, instead of trying to shoe-horn racism into it? Because I can guarantee, no matter how much you think Republicans hate black people, they hate felons more.
That was not my intent though I can see how it would be confusing. I provided the knowlege of voting patterns example make the first proposition more explicit. I would have been better served inserting a “just like” in there. Both possibilities exist simultaneously. My point was not to suggest either was true but that Curtis Lemay was wrong to claim the first was not merely because nonblack felons were given the same treatment.
As a general principle, yes. In this age of modern technology, I’d be willing to substitute a requirement that the applicant digitally record his statement, and have state-provided digital recorders at offices designed for this reason, if actual writing is considered a barrier… but the general principle is this: committing a felony is a serious matter.
I wonder how strong the reception would be for proposals to make it easier for an ex-felon to get his gun rights back? I suspect it would be be somewhat lukewarm, but for the wrong reason. Here on the SDMB, many would agree to any proposal to make it more difficult for anyone to own a gun. But in real life, the reasons to remove gun ownership and possession rights from a felon is clear: they have demonstrated a disregard for the law, an inability to conform their conduct to the law. They have broken the social contract, and one punishment is permanent loss of certain civil rights.
Among those rights are gun ownership and voting.
I have no problem with making it a bit of a journey to restore civil rights. The felon should be able to and interested in showing that he understands how his conduct broke the kink between himself and society, and why he’s interested in restoring that link. It should not simply be the submission of a paper with “Check here if you wish your voting rights restore,” any more than it should be, “Check here if you wish to be able to legally possess firearms again.”
One that in many cases is completely disproportionate, especially in the case of many drug crimes.
This is a non sequitur. If you want to talk about gun ownership, then you can argue that there’s a direct link between having a gun and committing a breach of the peace. That’s the reason one might want to restrict gun ownership of someone who has committed a violent crime. There’s no logical link to voting.
I believe that’s what prison is about. Our criminal law system is about figuring out the appropriate penalty for a violation of the law, and the right to vote has nothing to do with it.
The right to vote is a fundamental right, such as the right to speak freely or the right to travel or the right to practice religious beliefs unhindered. It should be automatically restored with those rights when the legally appropriate penalty has been served.
[QUOTE=Bricker;12331476In this age of modern technology, I’d be willing to substitute a requirement that the applicant digitally record his statement, and have state-provided digital recorders at offices designed for this reason, if actual writing is considered a barrier… [/QUOTE]
I don’t think the Governor’s proposal has a lot of merit to it, but I think this is the crux of the matter: If the ex-felons can dictate their treacly essays, then this isn’t actually literacy test at all. It’s still pointless and patronizing nonsense, in my view, but not actually evil.
The problem comes if these essays actually do need to be written by the ex-felon, rather than dictated or recorded. If so, then it turns into an actual literacy requirement for ex-felons to vote - which we can expect would have much the same racist consequence as the traditional literacy test for voting.