Denialists. :rolleyes:
Imagine a prison population voting in a local election. They could sway the election. Vote in different judges. Changes laws they had violated.
There is at least one real world example that I’m aware of. Oak Ridge was created during WWII and within 2 years had a population of over 75,000. They voted locally and over whelmed the mostly rural county voters. The demographics were a problem too. Oak Ridge attracted young and often highly educated workers. You couldn’t live in Oak Ridge unless a close family member had a job. County voters were rural and often had barely completed the sixth or seventh grade.
Thats why military personnel on US bases don’t vote locally. They would sway the local election.
Prisoners in a state prison are typically citizens of that state. They’d vote locally.
And a lot of black people say things in private (about white people) that they don’t say in public, but they can’t be racists, because they are black.
That doesn’t follow. Black people can be racists too, but that is a red-herring to this discussion. White people have been and are in control of all branches of government and pretty much in all corporate positions of culture. Incarceration and disenfranchisement policies are put in place by whom?
So… when one looks at incarceration rates, then looks at the fact that its more males then females… is “The WoMan” who is trying to disenfranchise the male populace from voting? Should I worry?
Any ways, I did some looking and pulled up some stats:
FYI: Couldn’t find anything for 1999…
Black (1990-2001) 42.5 43.4 44.1 44.2 43.9 43.5 41.1 42.0 41.2 44.6
Black (2002-2009) 44.6 44.3 43.8 43.3 40.6 40.9 38.9 40.2 40.1
White (1990-2001) 41.8 41.1 40.1 39.9 39.1 40.1 41.6 40.6 41.3 37.4
White (2002-2009) 38.0 34.1 34.6 35.7 34.6 35.2 36.0 33.9 33.1
There is certainly a disparity as of 2009. Another thing I read was that even those who are not felons and those who are in half-way houses, parole, probation, etc. are considered to be incarcerated. They also counted “drunk tank” occurrences and the like, when people are held for less than two days. So, the population count or rate or whatever does not reflect “unique” incarcerations who are in fact imprisoned as a felon. To quote what those BJS reports state: “Estimated number of inmates held in custody in state or federal prisons or in local jails…”
Really, what we need is the raw data which would have fields for race, incarceration type (drunk tank, jail, prison, etc), felons/non-felons, year, state of judgement (because not all states take away the right but you might be staying somewhere else). Then, we could have data on the unique count of blacks and whites in jail who are felons and can’t vote.
As for why the US has a higher rate of incarceration could be the method of reporting. Are all countries reporting drunk tank people as incarcerated? Are they counting those on parole as incarcerated? Are they counting those on half-way houses or other out-of-jail/prison rehab programs as incarcerated? Are they counting paroles as incarcerated? The US does, hence the higher numbers. That’s the problem when you compare one country to another, defining the standard of which to report against. Else, the information become arbitrary and you don’t want that when you expound numbers as facts.
Since you are the one stating that the US has a higher rate, I think you should go and investigate the other countries as well. Make sure we, or they, are up to par on reporting and are all on the same level. I did some cursory looking, but there is no outright answer for a forum post without making this a dissertation for a PhD in criminal law or something.
Again, there would be no disenfranchisement if the crimes were not committed. They make their own choices. Every incarcerated individual, apart from the occasional unfortunate wrongly accused innocents, chose crime over voting. So as a white person, it’s no more my fault that a black felon can’t vote than it is my fault that a white felon can’t vote. And if next year triple the number of whites go to prison and become the majority there, that would not be my fault either, nor would it be yours.
I can appreciate your concern for the issue, but I believe you to be trying to fix the wrong thing. Put your efforts and passions into trying to prevent them from committing the felonies and you’ll solve far more than just their voting problems.
The problem is that the Constitution (for various historical reasons) does not address current common sense ideas of citizenship. Surely in a Democracy there should be a right to vote as a very basic right- only removed for most severe reasons (subversion of the state, revolt, gross violations of election law etc.) It seems to me as a modern rule of law democrat that such a right should be created were we writing a modern constitution. This is certainly the case for what passes for such constitutions in Europe.
That’s not the point. Imagine there was a law on the books that if you get fined for speeding you will lose your driver’s license forever, but in the mean time thousands who are guilty of registration fraud, vehicular manslaughter, DWI, etc. all retain their licenses. It would be easy to say as long as you don’t speed you don’t have anything to worry about, but that wouldn’t address the flaw in that system.
But then, imagine that before any such law was enacted, someone who already didn’t want you, personally - PurpleClogs - to be able to drive, scoured over state records and found that most often when you were ticketed it was for speeding. So they deliberately wrote a law that speeding would cost you your license. But you had no record for DWI and some friends of the guy making the law do enjoy an occasional jaunt in the country with a case of beer, so DWI wouldn’t cost anyone their license.
Then, imagine if the local cop on the highway only seemed to activate his radar when your car was coming even though dozens of others sped right past him without incident. So now you have this law that was written specifically to keep you from driving, and it was done so by estimating that in your lifetime you would most likely be ticketed for speeding, and on top of that, the local enforcement of that law seems to be concentrated primarily on you personally.
You could still argue that as long as you don’t ever speed you won’t have any problems, so why worry… but do you really think that gets to the heart of the problem?
One crime’s punishment should have no bearing on another’s.
What I did yesterday has no effect on what I do tomorrow. I know the consequences and can choose not to offend.
Another person’s activity, whether criminal or not, caught or not, prosecuted or not, or punished appropriately or not, has nothing to do with my choice to commit a particular crime, habitual or otherwise.
I am sure this unfotunately happens in some areas, but it doesn’t account for the disparity in the number of incarcerations and still has nothing to do with my crime I hypothetically committed.
So years ago, a white person said I know what crime blacks will be committing in the year 2014 in greater numbers than whites? Don’t think so.
Perhaps your locality has a problem that is not pervasive throughout the country? Still, the criminal is responsible for his/her actions.
Yep. Accountability. If more whites were felons I’d feel the same way. Someday there might be, who knows! I’d still say they made their choice.
And this gets to the very point, although I know that was not your intention. The disenfranchisement rules were made to not apply to felons but to a list of various crimes that the supreme court discovered states had examined in order to determine which would most affect black citizens.
To cut through all the semantics and get right down to the sheer absurdity of your position we can just take it to the extreme conclusion - jaywalking, it is determined, merits the death penalty, only in states where the majority of pedestrians are people named PurpleClogs. Fair since you could just “not jaywalk” to solve the problem, or is it acceptable for people, even ones not named PurpleClogs to question the law?
Citation?
You lose credibility if you can’t disagree with someone without being insulting or disrespectful. Just state your case and more people will pay attention to the content of your statements.
They too can and should avoid breaking the law. They are not victims.
I doubt that the people who write the laws did so out of malice, with the intent of creating a system where millions of people of color would end up losing their right to vote. I suspect it’s a mostly a case of unintended consequences, or perhaps a few malicious people who hid their true motives from the rest of the law makers.
In broad terms, it seems that in just about any election, there are people who want things to change and there are people who want things to stay the same. Naturally, the people who are in prison would tend to want change. And I’m confident that the people who are in power would want things to stay the same. The latter is in a position to outflank the former, so they do. I’m not surprised. And yes I think it’s bad idea but I’m trying to describe the dynamic of what’s actually happening.
As for “rationale”… I’d say they pat themselves on the back with arguments like “If we let felons vote they might get rid of the judges who put them away” et cetera. Whatever lets you sleep at night, I suppose.
There are two in my first post to this thread.
Not if the position that I am critical of is indeed absurd, as is the case here.
Case in point.
Post #26 includes cites to a lot of very credible evidence that that is exactly what they did.
I always figured it was just one more thing to deprive them of as a way of punishing them (not that they’d necessarily care). Also that felons likely weren’t the sort of people we’d want having a voice in our democratic process (although, come to think of it…).
I’ve spent far too much of my time on this already. I have no interest in going through what even you said is a lengthy read, and indeed it is.
We just disagree. 
But in the end there’s nothing wrong with challenging existing laws if you believe they should be changed. There’s not even a necessity to debate the past. That’s mostly where you lose me. Just argue what they should be now. Isn’t that all that really matters?
Agreed.
Sorry about that, but reading is sometimes required in order to understand what is being discussed on a text based message board.
Yes, your uninformed opinion and the factual information that I have presented are in total disagreement with each other.