Why prevent felons from voting?

Great Debates
201

Wow. A casual reader thinks you’re denying and rebutting my claim.

But in fact, you’re demonstrating it.

When is consensus important? Not if the consensus disagrees with you! If the SDMB opinion flouted consensus in the matter of same-sex marriage, then good for them for being ahead of the curve! But the consensus on felon disenfranchisement, hey, now, that’s just a stupid consensus, so no need to pay attention to it.

The world’s nations don’t support same-sex marriage? They’re backward.

The world’s nations don’t support the same consensus as the US on guns, but share gun-ban-favor with liberals? Why, then, look how backward the US is!

When is a consensus among the states persuasive?

When is a consensus among nations persuasive?

The answer to each is: when the consensus dovetails with liberal goals.

You just said as much.

But if I’m wrong – then tell me a specific example of a consensus that you regard as persuasive but yet runs counter to liberal orthodoxy.

202

Heh.

203

As I see it, the chief legitimate concern is having politicians pursue the criminal vote in ways that work against the interests of the law abiding. I speculate that a study of the Canadian experience would shown such concerns to be overblown.
Bricker proposes another justification: felons shouldn’t vote to satisfy part of the public’s desire for retribution (I mostly ruled out other theories of punishment, subject to the caveat above regarding incapacitation.) I could bring out the mock-hammer now, which is used during disagreements of value as opposed to fact, observation or logic, but I think I’ll save it for another thread.

I do wish to take issue with one aspect of Bricker’s plan:

I qualify the last by asserting that the governor has better things to do: the letter should be directed to a parole board or something like that.

I object to the good character references. Here’s why. A legitimate public policy goal is the integration of the ex-con into a law abiding community. That can mean leaving your own buddies behind, who may be addicts or criminally inclined. Your new friends might not know that you are an ex-con. You might want to keep things that way. Insisting upon these 3 letters of reference might be counterproductive to reintegration. At the very least, I would think proof of steady employment would be a sufficient substitute. Probably a better system would be to provide the probation officer with explicit guidelines.

204

I’m a tad disinclined toward any arbitrary aspect of the restoration process (well, I’m disinclined toward creating the need for restoration in the first place) because for the official, especially if an elected official like a governor, there’s little upside to treating felons in a civilized manner,while there are gains in treating them badly. If the official denies the restoration, the repercussions are trivial. If he restores a felon’s vote, and the felon goes on to reoffend (and of course, a significant percentage will), is there potential for some kind of Willie Horton accusation?

I asked earlier when Bricker presented his list why the obligation couldn’t be quadrupled, i.e. why not require twelve letters of recommendation and four statements of repentance and request for restoration, and make the waiting process four times as long… There’s no obvious point at which this becomes excessive or abusive and if one can claim “I’m only making it harder on felons to symbolize the penalty for transgression against the body politic”, then there is no limit because the goal is not clearly defined. I can imagine gubernatorial candidates trying to outdo each other in how demanding they will make their restoration requirements, trying to prove who’s toughest on crime, and there’s no real political downside to doing so, even less than calls for longer sentences, because that invites the question of who pays for more prisons.

205

Look, here’s a simple fact. For anyone not planning to run for political office (i.e. most of us), that person’s vote is their only true voice in the democratic process. It is the only way they have to influence the government that lords over them. It is a fundamental principle of democracy that you have influence over your representation in government.

Yeah, well, we all know what you think about the right to vote (which makes your persistence in conflating “moral” with “legal” really quite nasty, when you think about it). The fact is that voting is important, because a person’s vote is their voice in the political system. You don’t take it away from them. Full stop.

This is sickening.

Can anyone explain the concept of “rights” to Bricker? I don’t think he gets it. The consensus on whether or not homosexuals deserve equal rights DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER! The consensus on whether or not women have the right to control over their bodies DOESN’T FUCKING MATTER!

206

Yes, you do. Here’s my cite:

Do you have some other cite that contradicts this one?

Or was this a moral statement and not a legal one?

If so, please be advised that I don’t think we share a moral framework. For you to announce this principle, you have to do so in a way (to paraphrase President Obama) that shows how taking away a felon’s voting violates some principle that is accessible to people of all moral frameworks, not just yours.

Moral judgement? Then see above.

Or was this an ad hominem attack?

207

Because a pile of sand.

208

Yes, but it’s sand of as-yet unproven utility, which is known to gum the engines of law-abiding citizens. It makes me wonder why anyone is building this sand pile in the first place. “Because we want to” is not particularly impressive.

209

And the angels rejoice for huzzah there is opportunity for actual learning and dialogue.

Here’s five secular moral arguments for not disenfranchising felons:

Secular Moral Principle: People should not be treated differently on the basis of their race.
Fact: The criminal justice system disproportionately targets and punishes African-Americans, even when the underlying distribution of the criminal conduct is equal (as in the case of drug possession).
Conclusion: Any across-the-board punishment handed out in the criminal justice system before that system is substantially reformed wrongfully increases racial inequality and is therefore bad.

Secular Moral Principle: Good public policy requires that politicians be rewarded for choosing wise, just, and majority-supported policies.
Fact: The public choice dynamics of criminal justice policy are that it is almost always politically beneficial to treat potential and convicted felons more harshly, and almost always politically harmful to treat them less harshly. A substantial component of this is felon disenfranchisement. This creates a one-way ratchet of change that prevents needed corrections to criminal justice policy.
Conclusion: Felon disenfranchisement is bad because it helps create bad public policy (like felon disenfranchisement!).

Secular Moral Principle: Punishment should be tailored to the crime committed.
Fact: Disenfranchisement operates the same way for murderers as it does for people who harvest too many oysters.
Conclusion: Across-the-board disenfranchisement fails to abide by the principles of just punishment and is therefore bad.

Secular Moral Principle: We give almost everyone over 18 the right to vote because having the entire adult population vote is both most just and most efficacious at producing a good and wise democracy.
Fact: Felons are people too.
Conclusion: Taking the right to vote away from felons creates a population of people who have no say in government, reducing the overall justice of the system and marginally diminishing wise and good policy.

Secular Moral Principle: Laws that facially target the political process and that substantially and disproportionately benefit a single political party at the polls should have to serve a compelling interest that outweighs the harmful effect on the fairness of the political system.
Fact: Because of the racist criminal justice system as well as other historical circumstances, felon disenfranchisement disproportionately benefits Republicans.
Conclusion: Felon disenfranchisement should not be seen as justified unless its proponents can show that the disenfranchisement’s service of a compelling state interest outweighs its harmful effects.

Obviously, Bricker, you will disagree with some of those principles, some of those facts, and some of those conclusions (or all of them!). But at least this way there’s something to talk about, no?

210

It’s more impressive than restoring voting rights to feons automatically because you want to.

Regards,
Shodan

211

This argument goes to the entire criminal justice system. What rationale allows you to use it to tackle only the issue of voting?

Circular reasoning. If we begin with the assumption that it’s appropriate to treat convicted felons more harshly, then we cannot reach your conclusion that the created public policy was bad. In other words, this argument is petitio principii. You assume that your desired conclusion, treating felons more harshly than the general run of citizenry, is undesirable, and then show that the resultant policy is undesirable.

That’s perhaps an aspirational goal of the penal system. But right now, we put murderers and oyster harvesters on probation. We confine both of them behind bars.

We do not, in fact, have a penal system that tailors punishments to crime in any meaningful sense.

Why the “adult population?” Fifteen year olds are impacted by laws. Why shouldn’t they vote?

Answer, of course: because we have to draw a line.

You’ve tried to draw a line that includes felons. I’ll draw another line: while felons are people too, they are people that have voluntarily disassociated themselves with society. It’s neither wise nor just to permit them to participate in voting without a sincere, tangible gesture on their part to evince their desire to rejoin that aspect of society. Therefore, I’d say: having the entire adult non-felonious population vote is both most just and most efficacious at producing a good and wise democracy.

I don’t agree that this is the proper standard. Moreover, I don’t agree that a longstanding principle – one that predates the formation of the United States – can be tossed aside because it appears now to benefit a particular party.

However, I agree that this is a colorable argument.

212

Very good summary, and I admit it hadn’t occurred to me that disenfranchisement as well as Bricker’s proposed restoration process are in no way proportional to the severity of the offense except perhaps in the arbitrary determination of a governor or other state official who can decide a particular crime is too heinous or infamous to risk the potential political fallout of restoration.

This is precisely what I was describing earlier. Are you trying to imply my opinion should be discarded because I am pro-felon or pro-felony? I am neither - I’m pro- every adult citizen gets a chance to exercise the franchise.

213

Ah, so my statement about how felony disenfranchisement is seen as largely unnecessary in most developed countries is irrelevant, but the example of one state known to hold extremist wingnut views on a variety of social and scientific issues is incredibly valid as a universal policy standard!

I did not. I said the opposite. Read it again, or read further here.

This sounds confusing – I’m supposed to find something that I regard as “persuasive” that liberal democracies agree on but which “runs counter to liberal orthodoxy”? Lord knows, there’s no shortage of consensus on various social issues in certain US states that I vehemently disagree with, but those are hardly liberal states.

Let me try to illustrate a key point that you’re missing on this consensus business, that it’s not so much the state of consensus at any given time, like it was the result of a dice roll, but how those policies have evolved.

A good example is the sad case of Alan Turning, a brilliant mathematician and computer pioneer who made incredibly valuable contributions to the war effort in the Bletchley Park code-cracking endeavor. He was also gay, and when he was arrested in 1952 Britain still criminalized homosexuality. He was convicted, forced to undergo horrific hormone therapy, and eventually hounded into committing suicide.

I consider Britain, like most of western Europe, to be a successful social democracy, but values change as people become more enlightened. Not only have such primitive and draconian laws long been repealed, but in 2009 the British government issued a formal apology and three years later the Queen granted Turing a posthumous pardon. The same trends are observed in other social issues like abortion, health care, and gun control. It’s the direction of the policy trends, and the evolution of societal values that they reflect, that are the really important indicators of where society is heading. Meanwhile, we’ve got some US states that have not only banned gay marriage by statute, but just for sake of feel-good spite, have also passed constitutional amendments banning it, a general outlook that is shared with third-world backwaters mostly concentrated in north Africa.

There may be temporary reversals that run counter to these trends, but they’re few and far between – I’ve yet to see any jurisdiction enact support for gay rights, for instance, and then have to reverse itself because it turned out to somehow destroy the “sanctity of marriage”. I’ve yet to see any jurisdiction liberalize abortion laws and then have to reverse itself because society was being destroyed. And I’ve yet to see any jurisdiction that has repealed felony disenfranchisement have to enact it again because felons were somehow destroying the fabric of democracy. There’s a certain brand of social conservatives who, again and again, find themselves on the wrong side of history.

214

I would apply this principle to lots of things. Why does that diminish its force in this particular application?

I don’t think I’m beginning with that assumption. I’m saying that we want our politicians to be able to choose between Policy X and Policy Y by balancing their view of the wisdom of each policy and the public’s support for each policy. As it stands now, this doesn’t happen in the area of criminal justice reform, in part because the people subject to the policy are disenfranchised. It’s like choosing whether the Eagles or the Bears are the better NFL team but knowing that Philadelphia doesn’t get to vote you out of office if you make the wrong choice. Since so many decisions about the criminal justice system affect felons more than anyone else, making it so felons can’t vote messes with the dynamics that should make those decisions wise and just.

We confine them behind bars and put them on probation for different periods of time, though. A murderer might spend 30 years in jail and the oyster farmer might just spend one year. But in states that require petitions to restore voting rights, both might be disenfranchised for the rest of their lives.

And it isn’t just an aspirational goal, by the way. We actually put that one in the Constitution. There are complicated reasons why Eighth Amendment challenges aren’t very successful here, but no one really doubts that the principle I elucidated is enshrined in the Constitution.

We draw the line at children because we believe they are represented by their parents and because they are cognitively different from adults. Adult felons aren’t represented by anyone else, and have adult brains. And the notion that felons have “disassociated themselves from society” is rather quaint. Almost every adult in the country has committed a felony, from experimenting with drugs to buzzed driving to taking a spouse’s pain pill for a bad back to getting in a bar fight. Most of us just haven’t ever been caught.

But all of that sort of misses the point, which is that the bedrock of democracy is the notion that even contributions from the stupid and unwise increase the overall justice of the system and increase the overall wisdom of policy. It’s the nature of democracy as a principle of justice and the nature of the the wisdom of crowds.

Why do you disagree with the standard?

Lots of states have reformed their felony disenfranchisement laws. Some haven’t. The decision not to reform the laws should be subject to scrutiny just like the decision to pass them in the first place. I’m making a moral argument here, not a legal one. Obviously, the law cannot subject the decision not to change a law to scrutiny. But as citizens we can subject such decisions to scrutiny and conclude that such decisions are improperly driven by politics rather than policy.

215

The following state constitutions, all established well before the existence of current political parties or the notion that felony disenfranchisement might inure to the benefit of the Democrats, explicitly permit the state to forbid felons from voting:

Alabama Art.6,§5adopted 1819
ConnecticutArt.6 §2adopted 1818
Illinois Art.2,§30 adopted 1818
Indiana Art.6,§4adopted 1816
Kentucky Art.8,§8adopted 1799
Louisiana Art.6,§4adopted 1812
Mississippi Art.6,§5adopted 1817
Missouri Art.3,§14adopted 1820
New YorkArt.2,§2adopted 1821
OhioArt.4,§4adopted 1802
Virginia Art.3,§1 adopted 1776

According to this secular moral principle, when did those provisions become unsupportable? Or were they unsupportable ab initio?

216

The principle doesn’t say any of them is unsupportable, because the principle calls for weighing the compelling interests served by the policy against the damage it does to a fair political system.

Assuming there is no compelling interest that outweighs the damage done to the political system (and I have not seen one elucidated), then the principle would apply when politicians began to become aware that the law had begun to have that harmful effect on the political system. That’s a historical question that I don’t know the answer to. I suspect that before the Civil War felons were pretty evenly divided politically, but I don’t really know. I don’t even know if the divide started much before the mid-Twentieth century, and even then it wouldn’t be clear to me that it had a substantially disproportionate effect on the parties.

However, it is pretty clear does have that effect now. So in considering whether to change these laws, I think the principle is in play.

217

I am saying that the burden of proof lies with you. The status quo is an expression of the will of the historical majority. Thus “because we want to” has a lot more force than “because you want to”.

We don’t revoke laws just because the majority cannot convince the minority. It usually works the other way around.

Regards,
Shodan

218

Okay, Maine and Vermont don’t disenfranchise and have not turned into Mad Max wastelands.

Your move.

219

My move is to point out that nobody said they would.

Regards,
Shodan

220

Then I win by default. Hooray for me, my parade is next Sunday.
If you have further comments that are bit more on point than a haughty “Well, that’s just your opinion”, don’t be shy.