It would make sense that those who pose a threat to society should probably not be calling the shots. Of course I am referring to a large number of politicians, but let’s talk about those who are incarcerated under such pretenses.
The current law is that those (in some states) who committed a felony cannot vote, the assumption being that those with heinous crimes (which apparently include stealing cable for an extra TV) are just plain bad people and cannot be trusted to exercise their political rights, at least until they are rehabilitated. Although we’re still not sure what that last word means.
So it only makes sense that those who commit crimes such that they require incarceration should not vote. Except that this is living in Fantasy Land. It implies we have a comprehensively fair justice system. Now before anyone says it isn’t perfect but “the best in the world”, remember that Orwellian countries like China have a lower incarceration rate than we do. Is it really so conceivable that we just have so many more criminals per capita than any other nation in the world?
Of course that is conceivable, given the bookshelves of laws regulating every breath we take. You can’t step out of bed without having broken some code or ordinance at some level of government. We can’t possibly know all these laws — ignorance is one hell of an ethical excuse contrary to legal precedence — and the best one can hope for is that law enforcement doesn’t know of the law either. And they usually don’t, which is a double-edged sword, meaning a sword is illegal only if the cop wants to give it to his son for Christmas.
A corrections officer (in the process of defending the shooting of a dark-skinned kid in the back because they shouldn’t have been running away) once asked me if I thought all inmates were innocent. My answer was, and is, NO … only about 95% are there for crimes other than any they may actually have (or have not) committed. The national average of those who plea bargained is between 94-97%, and there are virtually endless cases of people who say they took the plea only to avoid a harsher sentence under fear of a longer sentence with a high conviction rate, especially for minorities. The number of full exonerations — even for the most serious crimes — is as extensive as the efforts of rogue lawyers will allow. I know some of these lawyers, and they are the true heroes, while the real criminals find little or no consequence hiding behind the blue wall.
And then there are all those cities and counties with a 100% solved murder stat who basically round up the first person from an undesirable neighborhood they see and push them through the system {cough, Baltimore, cough}. There are also officers who get awards for disproportionate amounts of arrests, only to be found planting evidence or using questionable just cause to arrest “drugged” drives with clean breath and blood tests.
And then there is the prison-industrial complex. Just like Wild West judges used to get paid per hanging, inmates are profit, and judges are investors — or let’s just say campaign contributions talk, even if we’re talking about railroading children for the slightest altercation on a school bus. At least one of these robed criminals got a taste of their own poison recently, but I would suggest this is not a unique case.
Lastly, even if we assume reasonable possibility of guilt across the board — in spite of all the above evidence — does it matter that the vast majority of those in prisons are doing time for non-violent crimes and about a quarter AREN’T EVEN CONVICTED?
So who are we looking to disenfranchise? The world where bad people go to jail and good people don’t clearly ain’t this one.
I’m not a supporter of universal suffrage, but I’m also not a supporter of ruling out a group of people based on their race, class, or actions (depending on the action – I’d much rather the vote of a murderer than the vote of an oppressor). It’s not like every murderer thinks murder should be legal or every thief thinks everything should be free for the taking by anyone. I’d wager more would be against mandatory minimums, three strikes laws, drug laws and sentencing, Most everything to do with the prison system and oversight, and the entire way the criminal justice system is incented to not care about guilt or innocence, but instead only about arrest rate and conviction rate. I’m sure there are plenty that wouldn’t vote to legalize marijuana and there are plenty that would. It’s not as though one would be turning the rabid dogs lose set to destroy the American way (that would be all the other people).
Even if we were to assume that every single person ever in jail did exactly what they were charged with – that still wouldn’t be reason in my opinion to disenfranchise them. First, what better way for a “system” to protect itself than take away the power of all those who might disagree with it. What better way to ensure unjust laws and practices remain in force than to nullify the very people who know about it best?
In this country it’s been shown over and over – most people donate money to fight the diseases they think will affect them, most people spend their time endlessly discussing the issues that they think impact them. How many non-smokers fought the smoking bans that prevents business owners from deciding for themselves if they will allow smoking in their restaurant? How many people who don’t vape or who aren’t related to the tobacco industry are fighting this absurd movement to make vapes remove the flavors from their packaging. How many people cared when New York added like a 300% tax on cigarettes (something that is obviously disproportionate and unfair to do to any legal product), how many people fight to legalize prostitution as a matter of protecting our freedom? Hell the same women who would shout “My body my choice!” when it comes to abortion would by and large be the same ones who say prostitution objectifies women and it should be illegal (never thinking about the woman whose body it is and whose choice it is). I wasn’t alive then, but I always wondered if at the end of the early feminist rallies pre 1955, if the white women had any problem seeing the black women sit in the back of the bus. It’s still evident today as movements are driven by “special interest groups” – a label that to me defines them and the problem perfectly. They have a special interest – theirs. They care not about the other people in the same situation as them, they are fighting only for their demographic. I mean why is there a women’s equality movement and a LGBTQ equality movement? Both want the same things in the end – so it’s indicative of the “I’m just gonna get mine” attitude that these two groups haven’t joined forces and said “eff the ERA, eff whatever LGBTQ specific laws. How about we do this once and we do it right – one law, for everyone (EVERYONE), that says no one can be discriminated against based on anything. period (maybe there’s some wordsmithing to be done there I don’t know ;)). But no one seems to give a sh*t about other people’s battles (by and large – yes of course there are many exceptions).
So why is this at all relevant to your post? Because, prisons in america are horrific. Prisons in America are criminal. For starters, if you take someone into custody, as we do when we put someone in prison, then it is our responsibility to ensure their safety – which I think the 50,000 – 250,000 prisoners raped a year shows the entire system has failed at that and is criminal on the scale of a crime against humanity. I think if you told the average person they were going to a maximum security prison for a year their first thought wouldn’t be that they didn’t know how they would live in a prison cell, their fist thought would be “I’ll never survive. I’ll be raped and beaten until I kill myself or they kill me – either way I’ll never make it through”. But there is so much wrong with the entire system, from the DA, to the judges, to the mandatory minimums, to the public defenders, to the laws, to the prisons, to the guards, etc. that I don’t want to start down one thread because I will leave 20 others of equal grotesqueness out.
My point is though, if you take away the power of all those imprisoned by disenfranchising them, then who is left in sufficient numbers that cares about the disgusting, sadistic, inhumane, and unjust situation our legal system has become? Who among the average people ever think about this topic (except maybe to say “they deserve what they get”).
In Florida alone, 10% of the eligible voters are disenfranchised – 10%. That’s makes the voting power of the teacher’s union look like the girl scouts, and while that 10% might not have public sympathy, or very much money, they could sure swing most races for Governor or Senator. But since they can’t vote, and since they can’t even vote immediately upon release, it creates disorientation among other things, making it hard to organize. At 10% these former prisoners would have the numbers to get an amendment to the state constitution on the ballot, but instead they can’t even vote for the candidate that won’t cut the social programs many of them are surviving on.
Also, time in many cases decays passion. Just like it “heals all wounds” it also makes things a distant experience which kills momentum. No different than how in the moment a person might be all fired up and want to do battle if some company terminated them unfairly, but 6 years later they may say “ah, what’s the point, may as well let it go”. When it’s been 6 years (or more) since someone has been released from prison, assuming they are still out, the fire for change doesn’t burn as hot, the motivation to right the wrongs is tempered. The hatred may still be there, but the will has been somehow broken by the feeling caused by seeing years of inaction – that there’s nothing they could do anyway (so we diffuse the passion of what should be the loudest voices slamming our criminal “justice” system by waiting them out, by keeping them isolated until many cool down or become involved in a new life they don’t want to jeopardize).
Sorry, I’m one loquacious SOB. I could have just said you can’t take away the right to vote from the people who break the law because they are the people we need to fight the laws that never should have been there to begin with. And considering 30% of our elected representatives voted against the Civil Rights Act, it’s criminally ridiculous to put forth the system is in danger from former convicts.
-Nick