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
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.
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.
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.
In late 2022, approximately 4.6 million people were unable to vote due to a felony conviction
Holy shit America! WTF??? That’s over 2% of the adult population!
Of what country? Canada?
(that math gives America ~23 million adults; I think you mean 2%)
You’re off by a bit. But what’s 10x between us friends?
258.3 million adults, so more like 1.7%. (Still too high, though)
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 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
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
Good. It is unlikely that there would be enough criminals, guilty of any crime actually worthy of being such, to successfully legalize that crime even if they wanted to (and for any reasonable crime most probably wouldn’t even want such, even theives don’t want to be stolen from). As such, there isn’t any particular risk in letting felons vote. However, not letting them do so allows laws to be weaponized to disenfranchise people
Donald Trump supports this legislation.
I don’t think he cares about his own right to vote…
I think the only time he’s ever voted were when he was performatively voting for himself.
And? Just because a terrible person supports something, doesn’t mean it is bad.
