# voting: What is the rationale behind taking away the right to vote of convicted felons? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 10, 2014, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144 "2014-05-10T20:20:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![busterpickle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@busterpickle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/busterpickle)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/21 "2014-05-11T07:23:59Z")
Still not seeing how taking away to vote of reprobates equates to the master plan to take away the vote of black people. Incarceration rate in the US is .743 percent which if they were all black would not impact their collective voting power by that much. That’s assuming those are all felons who can no longer vote. Now, take into consideration that most people don’t vote, you could have more sway with an advertising campaign then jailing the next black dude that came around the corner. ---
**Author:** ![bardos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bardos/32/1069_2.png) [@bardos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bardos)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 7:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/22 "2014-05-11T07:58:26Z")
Perhaps the idea is to disenfranchise the poor, not necessarily by race, although statistics bear out the fact that more people of colour are in the poor class. As we recall, the founding fathers pushed the idea of the vote for propertied classes only, that is, the folks with the most economics at stake… ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 8:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/23 "2014-05-11T08:11:52Z")
In Europe which is developing a more modern constitution than the one current in the USA there is now a guarantee that a vote may only be denied for cause and that cause must be reasonable and the benefit claimed by society by excluding people must be balanced against the damage done to society by not having a full franchise and demonising individuals. The UK is currently in dispute over this, but will lose its case fairly soon- they have been holding out for a decade or so against clear indications that they are acting outwith the European Convention on Human Rights, and will soon have to amend the law or start paying substantial damages to individuals who have been unfairly denied the vote. ---
**Author:** ![Drummond\_Bays](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8edcca/32.png) [@Drummond\_Bays](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drummond_Bays)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/24 "2014-05-11T08:37:32Z")
“White boys who use cocaine hydrochloride (powder) are just sowing wild oats. Black youths who use crack are in prison for long sentences.” Interesting, have you any factual comparisons between the sentences given to black “boys” for using cocaine powder, as opposed to white youths who use crack? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 10:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/25 "2014-05-11T10:34:06Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > I had assumed that all these facts were well understood, as facts. It is true that my offered interpretation could be construed as “opinion”, but anyone who draws any other conclusion from those facts is engaged in a knowing or unknowing apology for systemic racism. Felons lost the right to vote based on laws enacted before blacks could vote. It seems impossible to argue that effect precedes cause. ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 11:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/26 "2014-05-11T11:26:11Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > It’s a racist plot. And not a thinly veiled one. > [@John\_Mace](#): > > That’s an interesting opinion, but not a factual statement. There is plenty of evidence that felon disenfranchisement has been used specifically to disenfranchise black voters. There is a lot of [well-cited evidence here](http://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4066&context=flr) (PDF) It’s a pretty long read, and no single excerpt can sum it up but: > [@](#): > > It was during this era that felon disenfranchisement emerged as a tool for disenfranchising African-Americans. Despite the intention of the Fourteenth Amendment to require states to meet the mandates of the Equal Protection Clause and Due Process Clause, Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment also provided constitutional support for felon disenfranchisement. > > The Amendment provides, in part: > > But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, _except for participation in rebellion, or other crime_, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.(95) > > In the years following the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment,many Southern states embraced Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, using felon disenfranchisement as another means of disenfranchising African-Americans.(96) > > Many of these states specifically designed their felon disenfranchisement laws “to increase the effect of these laws on black citizens.” (97) Another long but well-cited discussion of the subject can be found in: Gabriel J. Chin, Reconstruction, Felon Disenfranchisement, and the Right to Vote: The Fifteenth Amendment Repeal Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, 92 Georgetown Law Journal 259-316, 259-260, 305-316 (January, 2004) > [@](#): > > The second sentence of Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment presents one of the Constitution’s most enduring mysteries. Adopted in 1868, this clause was designed to encourage the former Confederate states to enfranchise African-Americans by excluding former slaves from the state’s population for purposes of apportioning Congress if former slaves were denied the right to vote. As Justice Thurgood Marshall explained, “Section 2 … put Southern States to a choice–enfranchise Negro voters or lose congressional representation.” Southern states systematically disenfranchised African-Americans after Reconstruction, so the conditions triggering invocation of Section 2 existed for the better part of a century. Yet, under both Republican and Democratic-controlled Congresses, no discriminating state lost even a single seat in the House of Representatives when Congress reapportioned itself. From the era of Plessy to the era of Brown and beyond, no court ever declared that disenfranchised African-Americans would be excluded from a state’s population. It was as if Section 2 had disappeared. > > … > > Section 2 was never invoked to serve its intended function of promoting the right to vote on a race-neutral basis, or at least of punishing discriminating states. Ironically, however, it serves a critically important role in suppressing African-American suffrage. After a century of vigorous nonenforcement, and just as the ink was drying on the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Section 2 was revived as a justification not to subject felon disenfranchisement laws to equal protection scrutiny. The rationale was that Section 2 was a textual authorization for felon disenfranchisement and thus precluded application of otherwise applicable laws that might have allowed African-Americans to vote. > > … > > In an 1896 opinion written with startling candor, a unanimous Mississippi Supreme Court wrote that the all-white 1890 constitutional convention “swept the circle of expedients to obstruct the exercise of the franchise by the negro race.” African-Americans, the court explained, were “a patient, docile people, but careless, landless, and migratory within narrow limits, without forethought, and its criminal members given rather to furtive offenses than to the robust crimes of the whites.” Accordingly, “the convention discriminated against … the offenses to which its weaker members were prone… Burglary, theft, arson, and obtaining money under false pretenses were declared to be disqualifications, while robbery and murder and other crimes in which violence was the principal ingredient were not.” To this day, the disenfranchisement provision produced by the convention remains in effect. > > Mississippi was hardly alone. In Hunter v. Underwood, Justice Rehnquist, writing for a unanimous Court, invalidated Alabama’s felon disenfranchisement provision because it was aimed at African-Americans: “[T]he Alabama Constitutional Convention of 1901 was part of a movement that swept the post- Reconstruction South to disenfranchise blacks.” As part of this movement, “Virginia’s law adding petty larceny to the list of disqualifications was imitated because of its effect on the Negro vote.” An analysis of the factors inducing states to impose or eliminate felon disenfranchisement provisions concluded that “[s]tates with greater nonwhite prison populations have been more likely to ban convicted felons from voting than states with proportionally fewer non-whites in the criminal justice system.” ---
**Author:** ![Pjen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Pjen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pjen)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/27 "2014-05-11T11:38:22Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Felons lost the right to vote based on laws enacted before blacks could vote. > > It seems impossible to argue that effect precedes cause. Felons also lost the right to life (judicial killing) on laws enacted before blacks were citizens. It still impacts blacks unfairly. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/28 "2014-05-11T15:45:11Z")
> [@Crazyhorse](#): > > There is plenty of evidence that felon disenfranchisement has been used specifically to disenfranchise black voters. Post #6 might make a good topic for GD, but if you think you’ve proved it correct, you haven’t. If you want to debate that, it would best be done in GD. But I suggest you go back and read every word of that post before you do. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/29 "2014-05-11T16:14:09Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Post #6 might make a good topic for GD, but if you think you’ve proved it correct, you haven’t. If you want to debate that, it would best be done in GD. But I suggest you go back and read every word of that post before you do. And I’d suggest that you read the articles I linked to describing the problem. The reason felons are not allowed to vote today in the US is to disenfranchise them as a group. The reason blacks are convicted of felonies for behavior that whites are not is to disenfranchise and generally oppress them. While Mr. Bricker makes a clever argument that the removal of the franchise for felons preceded the right of blacks to vote, he makes a huge mistake when he says one cannot be related to another for the cause/effect reason. The number of people incarcerated and disenfranchised used to be trivial. Now it is not. During the past half-century (or maybe 60 to 65 years) the US has become the largest incarcerating country in the history of the world, taking a trivial fact about incarceration and using it for the tyrannical purpose of removing representation from a whole class of people that it taxes and uses for labor. We use this as one method among many of oppressing minorities. Notice that no other explanation of the evidence was offered, much less a better explanation. Evolution isn’t a theory in the sense that it is just a hypothesis waiting to be proven, evolution is a fact because it is the only offered explanation for all the evidence and has no competitors that attempt to encompass all the facts. Incarceration as a method of oppressing black people isn’t an “opinion”, it is a fact, and until the glib responders in this thread come up with a hypothesis that explains why the US is the highest incarcerator in the world, why the US incarcerates blacks at a much higher percentage than whites, why blacks are incarcerated for the same behavior whites are let to walk, why there are efforts to suppress black voting, etc. they haven’t even ante’d up, much less offered a superior explanation. I don’t think it is possible to offer a superior explanation, but I’m certainly open to it. I am not open to pettifogging the problem as an exercise for people who just want to hone their skills at rhetoric. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/30 "2014-05-11T16:21:55Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > During the past half-century (or maybe 60 to 65 years) the US has become the largest incarcerating country in the history of the world, taking a trivial fact about incarceration and using it for the tyrannical purpose of removing representation from a whole class of people that it taxes and uses for labor. We use this as one method among many of oppressing minorities. The reason that people of all skin tones might want to give a shit about this is that we are all now minorities. We have given the government power to disenfranchise those that the people in power would prefer have no say. That is now all people who are not stinking rich or politically powerful. Visit the US Capitol building. See how they value their own security so very highly. Visit the post office and see how much less security the citizens standing in line and working there get. How many times has a legislature in the US been shot up? None. How many times has a post office? Same with schools. Tyranny is having a huge swath of the population that doesn’t get a say and doesn’t get the protection of government and is taxed to give those in power the say so and the protection. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/31 "2014-05-11T16:27:58Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > Incarceration as a method of oppressing black people isn’t an “opinion”, it is a fact, and until the glib responders in this thread come up with a hypothesis that explains why the US is the highest incarcerator in the world, why the US incarcerates blacks at a much higher percentage than whites, why blacks are incarcerated for the same behavior whites are let to walk, why there are efforts to suppress black voting, etc. they haven’t even ante’d up, much less offered a superior explanation. I don’t think it is possible to offer a superior explanation, but I’m certainly open to it. Replace “blacks” with “poor people”(black and white and Latino), and you might understand the statistics. It isn’t a black/white thing. It’s a poor/not poor thing. At least, IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/32 "2014-05-11T16:36:48Z")
The poors are certainly subject to oppression, but the prison incarceration statistics by race show that it isn’t about the poors, but about the blacks. If it were about the poors, the prison statistics would show a lot higher percentage of white people in prison. Magic Johnson isn’t poor and Donald Sterling’s objection to his girlfriend being seen with Magic Johnson was about him being black. Tommy Lasorda isn’t at all surprised at what Sterling said. A lot of white people say things in private they don’t say in public, and because I’m white and male and middle aged, they say it around me. And have my whole life. Many “perfectly respectable” white people are racists. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/33 "2014-05-11T16:50:07Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > And I’d suggest that you read the articles I linked to describing the problem. > > The reason felons are not allowed to vote today in the US is to disenfranchise them as a group. The reason blacks are convicted of felonies for behavior that whites are not is to disenfranchise and generally oppress them. > > While Mr. Bricker makes a clever argument that the removal of the franchise for felons preceded the right of blacks to vote, he makes a huge mistake when he says one cannot be related to another for the cause/effect reason. The number of people incarcerated and disenfranchised used to be trivial. Now it is not. During the past half-century (or maybe 60 to 65 years) the US has become the largest incarcerating country in the history of the world, taking a trivial fact about incarceration and using it for the tyrannical purpose of removing representation from a whole class of people that it taxes and uses for labor. We use this as one method among many of oppressing minorities. > > Notice that no other explanation of the evidence was offered, much less a better explanation. > > Evolution isn’t a theory in the sense that it is just a hypothesis waiting to be proven, evolution is a fact because it is the only offered explanation for all the evidence and has no competitors that attempt to encompass all the facts. > > Incarceration as a method of oppressing black people isn’t an “opinion”, it is a fact, and until the glib responders in this thread come up with a hypothesis that explains why the US is the highest incarcerator in the world, why the US incarcerates blacks at a much higher percentage than whites, why blacks are incarcerated for the same behavior whites are let to walk, why there are efforts to suppress black voting, etc. they haven’t even ante’d up, much less offered a superior explanation. I don’t think it is possible to offer a superior explanation, but I’m certainly open to it. > > I am not open to pettifogging the problem as an exercise for people who just want to hone their skills at rhetoric. If you’d like to debate this, open a thread in GD. But you’re going to have a difficult time proving what people’s motivations are, and how this “conspiracy” is run. Just because you found some dots and have devised a way to connect them does not mean that the dots even need to be connected in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![PurpleClogs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f04885/32.png) [@PurpleClogs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PurpleClogs)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/34 "2014-05-11T18:07:10Z")
If it’s bothering people so badly, there’s a really simple solution… Don’t break the law. These things are supposed to be punishments after all. They should be harsh enough to deter a crime before it’s committed. They’re not simply getting free room & board, gym membership, and time to play cards with all their buddies, then back to the free world as if nothing happened. They are disenfranchising themselves. ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/35 "2014-05-11T18:16:05Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > . > The reason felons are not allowed to vote today in the US is to disenfranchise them as a group. The reason blacks are convicted of felonies for behavior that whites are not is to disenfranchise and generally oppress them. > > … > > I am not open to pettifogging the problem as an exercise for people who just want to hone their skills at rhetoric. Fact: your first sentence: this is the second time you stated it, although this time without the word “fact.” It is not a fact. It is an opinion, based on Reconstruction debate, which, like, as you say and I understood correctly without seeing malice on your part, is similar to an asshole in a particular metaphoric way. Fact: whenever you speak or writing in argument or not you are using rhetoric. Sometimes poorly, as using reification w/o further clarification, which here sets you up for being called on it due primarily to the brief length of the posts. “Is-not” “Is–too” threads are short. Rhetoric is not a term of opprobrium, as opposed to “pettifogery.” This post is not pettifogery. Although if you want you can reply saying so, perhaps redefining “honing their skills at rhetoric” as a prologue. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/36 "2014-05-11T19:26:54Z")
> [@PurpleClogs](#): > > … They should be harsh enough to deter a crime before it’s committed. They’re not simply getting free room & board, gym membership, and time to play cards with all their buddies, then back to the free world as if nothing happened… That’s prison you’re describing, right? Sounds easy when you put it like that. I hear inmates get pie, as well. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Crazyhorse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crazyhorse/32/31_2.png) [@Crazyhorse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crazyhorse)\ **Post date:** [May 11, 2014, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/37 "2014-05-11T23:03:42Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Post #6 might make a good topic for GD, but if you think you’ve proved it correct, you haven’t. If you want to debate that, it would best be done in GD. But I suggest you go back and read every word of that post before you do. I don’t want to engage in an endless debate - that’s why I post more often in GQ than GD. Ironically factual information means more here than it does in GD (IMHO). It is a matter of fact, not opinion, that ‘felon disenfranchisement’ was quickly turned to by many states as a tool to prevent blacks from voting shortly after after the abolition of slavery, There are several cases of the Supreme Court declaring state laws unconstitutional on the basis that they targeted blacks specifically, and all but a few “Red States” have abolished the lifelong disenfranchisement of convicts in the years since. Note that “felon disenfranchisement” is not an accurate term. In this very spirit of singling out certain minorities, states extended the definition to apply to those convicted of small, petty non-felony crimes too and chose those crimes (according to evidence deemed accurate by SCOTUS) because they applied primarily to black convicts in their states. I’m not claiming that the concept originated as a way to prevent blacks from voting. Getting back to the OP, the concept dates back to the earliest systems of law and government, We brought it over to the new world with us. That is why it exists. But in the US race became a major political issue, slavery was abolished, many mostly Southern states were fuming about it, blacks were suddenly a majority in some jurisdictions, and these states manipulated their laws to work in concert with felon disenfranchisement in a deliberate, overt, attempt to prevent blacks from voting. That is a simple matter of historic record and needs no debate. Beyond these documented cases of deliberate, overt disenfranchisement, there aren’t too many who would disagree that there is also an indirect, maybe not deliberate, effect as well due to the various socioeconomic differences people are citing. From the first paragraph of my cite: > [@](#): > > While African-Americans comprise approximately 12% of the United States population, they comprise 36% of the population that has lost the right to vote due to a criminal conviction. Whether this is a sign of a grand conspiracy or simply the unfortunate result of socioeconomic influences in society, or some combination of both, doesn’t really matter if you are one of that 36%. The result works out the same whatever the intent. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2014, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/38 "2014-05-12T00:51:47Z")
I’m completely satisfied that no person in this thread has attempted to offer a better explanation than oppression of a minority makes that the modern purpose of disenfranchisement, a fact that no amount of lazy hand-waving will change. If the denialists wish to continue with the hand-waving, referring to “dots” or saying it is deserved, that says quite a bit all by itself. Racism in the US exists as a fact, it is not a matter of conjecture such as the tooth fairy. Disenfranchisement is also a fact, regardless of the postulation of people who refer to it as a “dot” or “statistic”. Incarceration of black people at much higher rates and for conduct white people walk on is also a fact, not a unicorn. Excluding some of these facts from the big messy picture that is reality is the kind of re-framing that Fox News attempts several times an hour. We live in a big messy racist country filled with zillions of interconnections that at every turn systematize racial injustice. There are people who demurrer to there being any connection among these facts who claim they haven’t a racist bone in their bodies. Donald Sterling claims he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body. So what? The facts speak loudly for themselves and, as Shakespeare noted, “a man may smile and smile and still be a villain.” ---
**Author:** ![Lanzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/74df32/32.png) [@Lanzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lanzy)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2014, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/39 "2014-05-12T01:07:13Z")
IMHO there is NO good reason to take away a person’s right to vote. None. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [May 12, 2014, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144/40 "2014-05-12T01:15:19Z")
Do you really want pedophiles to have a say in age-of-consent legislation? 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/voting-what-is-the-rationale-behind-taking-away-the-right-to-vote-of-convicted-felons/688144.md?page=3)