Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont submitted the legislation, named the Inclusive Democracy Act, on Tuesday which would guarantee the right to vote in federal elections for all citizens regardless of their criminal record.
In a statement, Pressley said the legislation was necessary due to policies and court rulings that “continue to disenfranchise voters from all walks of life — including by gutting the Voting Rights Act, gerrymandering, cuts to early voting, and more.” Welch called the bill necessary due to “antiquated state felony disenfranchisement laws.”
In late 2022, approximately 4.6 million people were unable to vote due to a felony conviction, according to a study by the Sentencing Project, a nonpartisan research group. The same study found that Black and Hispanic citizens are disproportionately likely to be disenfranchised due to felony
Convicted of drug crime? Should never lose right to vote.
Convicted of violent crime? Should regain right to vote upon release.
Convicted of trying to overturn an election? Never get to vote again.
They should all be able to vote. From prison, too. The punishment never needs to be to take their voting rights away. If they commit fraud, stop them from committing fraud again.
I think if you’re overthrowing the government, you’re basically tapping out of the democracy. That’s literally the only crime I could see not being allowed to vote. I also think they should be removed from the country they tried to destroy. But then I have no idea how would they remain detained in that situation.
If they are not allowed to vote then by all rights they shouldn’t be taxed as well.
I’d prefer compulsory voting from all able people of voting age. Prisons should have full in-person voting locations with private voting booths. Mail-in ballots should be a freely available option for all.
It doesn’t guarantee good results, but I feel it is the most straightforward way to rid ourselves of voter suppression campaigns, which I think are fundamentally evil.
What’s the punishment for failing to vote? It would just end up being a poor tax.
I disagree with this approach without even touching the morality aspect.
There should be no way to lose your voting rights once you are of age and a citizen of the US for the very simple reason of limiting the bureaucratic overhead of elections. If every citizen above the age of 18 can vote, you can just completely remove the ridiculous notion of “voter registration”.
Just register everyone based on their legal address (which the government should have anyway because taxes). Just like a real democracy.
I agree with this.
Even people who make mistakes should be entitled to vote. Even while paying for their mistakes frankly. They may have lost their freedom, but they are still citizens of the Republic.
The only compelling argument I know of is that voting in local elections is a mess because there would be counties that’d suffer from the over representation due to the location of the prisons. I would just consider those to be absentee voters myself, and they just keep the last address they had before going in or next if kin instead.
Just my thoughts
I disagree with violent crime, they should entirely lose the right to vote. There’s no room in our society for behavior like that
If the number of violent criminals in your society is enough to affect the outcome of an election, you’ve got much bigger problems. And if you take away the right to vote for violent crimes, politicians will attempt to redefine what “violent” means to disenfranchise more people.
I hate to break it to you, but here in the U.S. we definitely have much bigger problems
What third world shit is that? You can’t vote if you’ve been convicted of a felony? That’s some medieval thinking right there, god the US is a hopeless barbaric mess only thinly disguised as a democracy.
It gets worse. Many of the felony disenfranchisement laws originate from the civil war era. Combine that with the 13th amendment still allowing slavery as a punishment for crime and you can take a guess who was overwhelmingly targeted.
Well fucking yea! You lose your rights as soon as you do stupid things… Behave in the society if you dont want this to happen to you…
Removing the right to vote from felons means you create a class of society that can no longer represent themselves, and must trust non-felons to represent their interests. This is inherently anti-democratic thought and is fundamentally an abhorrent thought process, especially considering false convictions are more common than one would expect.
“False convictions are more common that one would expect” that is a different problem that needs a different solution.
“You create a class that can no longer represent themselves” you dont, they did it when they chose to break the law.
If the felon population is so high that it really is going to represent a threat that they might be able to band together and vote as a bloc to get some candidate elected…well your legal system is fucked up and this is probably good. If it isn’t that high, then it doesn’t matter.
There is no good reason to remove the right to vote. It’s just meant as punishment, and I doubt it acts as much it a deterrence because who is going to be thinking about their right to vote when committing a crime?
Sure there is, it promotes candidets to go for those votes. Making laws less severe and a broken society as consequence… But if that is what you want, why have laws at all? In the end the people who brake them can chose candidets who would remove them. Ask Portland OR how is their “every drug is legal” law working, zombie town if you go downtown. I guess that is what is important? Good luck
Yes you fucking can, in fact, voting rights is just about the easiest right to restore once your off paper and paid all your restitution and fines. (Which can be goddam hard. But it is doable.)
Source; I’m an ex fucking convict lol. I’ll have my gun rights back next year if all goes well.
If the person has paid by doing their sentence and are in good faith trying to integrate into society, they should be able to vote.
Except traitors and or domestic terrorists, they can go fuck themselves.
Honestly even those should be able to vote. If there are enough to actually win an election, then the area in question has a problem regardless, and if not, then the only actually consequencential effect of forbidding it would be that unscrupulous political groups could try and declare their enemies traitorous to try to disenfranchise them.
Democracy is a social contract. If you break the terms of the contract by attempting to overthrow democracy, you lose the rights afforded by that contract, like voting.
The problem with that reasoning is that the vast majority of felonies aren’t trying to overthrow a democracy. Punishments should fit the crime.
A DUI shouldn’t stop you from voting, nor should a conviction for being a prostitute. Burglary shouldn’t either. The punishments for each of those felonies should be different and determined case by case. None of them have anything to do with voting.
What rational argument is there for citizens to lose their right to vote?
Say you lose your right to vote over possession of drugs. Why? You shouldn’t you have representation?
While in prison you become slave labor. For profit prisons get money for housing and feeding you. They get money from the contracted work you do. They double and triple dip profits. There’s all kinds of under the table deals being done on your back. But why did you lose your right to vote? It all goes back to controlling certain groups of the population. That’s where it started, that’s where it still is. Sure, restrict gun ownership for felons, that’s a constitutional right that has long needed overhaul for so many reasons, but the right to vote, why??
I’d point to the non-war-on-drugs felony charges as better examples of the kinds of crimes that make sense to take voting away over. CSAM, massive tax fraud, terrorism, mass violence, particularly heinous yet targeted violence, forcing an altered state of mind onto others via unknown substances,
The kinda heinous sociopathic shit that marks a clear disregard for the social contract.
Broadly I disagree with the notion of there being a crime you never finish atoning for, but I can understand why people might hesitate to bring the gates down for folks who’ve committed such acts even after long periods of reform.
Problem is, that would be for federal crimes ionly. But, the biggest problem is that states write the rules for all elections, not the feds
