Policy 2020: Felon/Imprisoned Suffrage

[Celery Man 20832]

Germany allows it as well.

[NowThis 931]

so if felons can vote in local city elections, often decided by a few dozen votes, what does that mean for the local future?

Imagine a prison which is in the jurisdiction of a town of 12,000 but has a prison of 9,000 inmates. Would the damn politicians have to court the prison vote to win? It can get truly fucked up at the local or county level right? 

Commissioner Johnson won by 15 votes because he got all the critical votes from the 20 dudes on death row! Promised them liquor and lap dances. 

 

Edited April 25, 2019 by NowThis

[Celery Man 20832]

if it were to be allowed, prisoners should vote in elections local to their address prior to imprisonment

[NowThis 931]

2 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

if it were to be allowed, prisoners should vote in elections local to their address prior to imprisonment

the impact then would be most pronounced at the state level. So, the 2000 Florida POTUS count would certainly have gone to Gore.

[bad_teammate 13115]

10 minutes ago, NowThis said:

Imagine a prison which is in the jurisdiction of a town of 12,000 but has a prison of 9,000 inmates. Would the damn politicians have to court the prison vote to win? It can get truly fucked up at the local or county level right?

hell yes Mayor Snidley Whiplash

[Johnny Sack 8397]

55 minutes ago, GSU&UT said:

Again, this doesn't mean it isn't a symptom of institutionalized racism. I don't know what your point is other than you seem to be acting like racism is only a thing if you loudly say the N-word or something.

My point is the laws weren’t passed with some racist intent.  

[henrygandorf 29169]

7 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

My point is the laws weren’t passed with some racist intent.  

no, the point is that coke is better than crack and people need to fucking realize that.

[Johnny Sack 8397]

3 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

no, the point is that coke is better than crack and people need to fucking realize that.

[bad_teammate 13115]

lol @ The Pete Defender dismissing the existence of systemic racism and getting jokey with a CHUD about it

[EMAWesome 101]

On 4/24/2019 at 9:40 AM, Fozzz said:

You could make the ability to own a furby a constitutional right, would that make it as fundamentally important to democratic governance as the right to vote?  I would think people with normally functioning brains would argue that the right to vote is indeed more important than the right to acquire a furby.

It's always easier to suppress the rights of an unarmed person than it is an armed person.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

6 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

The logic behind disallowing voting for the imprisoned and disallowing voting for the released is virtually identical.

Both of them are based on the idea that a criminal conviction is a justifiable basis for removing the right of an American citizen to vote. There is no rational cause to remove this right specifically, and is merely used for punitive reasons at best and outright white supremacist reasons at worst.

The practical impact of both policies is to perpetuate white supremacy.

Yeah that's a big swing, and a miss, on every point you tried to make.

[formermav43 4599]

2 hours ago, bad_teammate said:

lol @ The Pete Defender dismissing the existence of systemic racism and getting jokey with a CHUD about it

 

5 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

give it a fucking rest man.  racial oppression is real.  institutionalized racism is real.  there is a big umbrella of shittiness that goes back centuries.  nobody is disputing it.

Accuses everyone who disagrees with him of being intellectually dishonest. Then blatantly lies about the position of someone he’s arguing with.

Is this where we trot out the old “every accusation is a confession” canard?

[bad_teammate 13115]

Saying that it's real and then denying its actual effects and causes is denial.

He is arguing that disenfranchising black people is not a goal of racist prison and justice policy. That is denying the existence of systemic racism.

Again, just like the history buffs who say "oh yeah racism is totally real" and then shoot down every example of racism offered.

[EuroHorn 3204]

1 minute ago, bad_teammate said:

Saying that it's real and then denying its actual effects and causes is denial.

He is arguing that disenfranchising black people is not a goal of racist prison and justice policy. That is denying the existence of systemic racism.

Again, just like the history buffs who say "oh yeah racism is totally real" and then shoot down every example of racism offered.

Groverat thinks this guy should vote 

[scottsins 1951]

I’m not reading all 150+ posts on this thread, but I find it fascinating that convicted felons can vote in Texas.

[bad_teammate 13115]

All Americans should have the right to vote.

No American should be executed by the government.

Specific to this argument regarding institutional racism (which is real), disenfranchisement is the entire purpose.

Quote

Like other Southern states, Florida also enacted a set of measures known as the Black Codes. The state established severe penalties for minor crimes like vagrancy and petty larceny and arrested large numbers of former slaves based on thin or invented claims. States throughout the nation passed laws in the early 19th century that barred former felons from voting. In the South, these laws spread during Reconstruction, in response to black citizens’ getting the vote, at the same time as Black Codes created many more black convicts. The 1868 Florida Constitution disenfranchised felons and included petty larceny among the crimes that counted as felonies.

Poll taxes and literacy tests would come later. In the 1870s, felon disenfranchisement — along with lynchings, kidnappings and other violence — served to “preserve the purity of the ballot box,” in the words of an 1884 Alabama Supreme Court ruling. The strategy succeeded. In Florida, a faction of reactionary white people gained a majority in the Legislature in 1876, essentially ending the chance for African-Americans to share political power.

The disenfranchisement of former felons remained a widespread feature of American law until the civil rights era of the 1960s and ’70s, when 17 states repealed their disenfranchisement provisions for former felons. The Florida Legislature tried to join this group of states, passing a bill in 1974 to restore the right to vote after the completion of a felony sentence. But the state Supreme Court issued an advisory opinion that the bill interfered with the executive branch’s powers to grant pardons and restore civil rights, effectively striking the bill down. The same year, the Supreme Court of the United States heard a case brought by former felons in California claiming the state laws that permanently disenfranchised them violated the equal-protection guarantee in the 14th Amendment. The court rejected that argument, because another part of the 14th Amendment states that the right to vote can be “abridged” for committing a crime.

Institutional racism is real.

The purpose of institutional racism is to disempower and disenfranchise minorities.

If this hurts your feelings, I'm sorry, but it's true.

Felon Disenfranchisement and The New Jim Crow

[Catdaddyhorn 3438]

12 hours ago, GSU&UT said:

Is this you acting like institutionalized racism doesn't exist again? You can find black people supporting whatever ideas you want, that doesn't mean it didn't have an overwhelmingly disproportionate effect on black men, so much so that that these laws literally had to be reserved with the Fair Sentencing Act.

Not to mention they asked for a few things more than just tougher laws. There were a few carrots asked for along with that stick, but like most things when it comes to black people the government just came with the sticks.  For a more insightful read than anything Larry Elder could vomit up checkout James Forman's book "Locking up Our Own"

[Catdaddyhorn 3438]

 

 

[Rimbo 25705]

https://www.theonion.com/coast-guard-terror-suspect-released-after-cell-needed-f-1834337523

 

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4965]

So if these laws were spread during reconstruction, can we blame the yankee carpetbaggers for a good portion of this institutional racism stuff? 

[bad_teammate 13115]

12 hours ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

So if these laws were spread during reconstruction, can we blame the yankee carpetbaggers for a good portion of this institutional racism stuff? 

White people

[Chooky 13292]

Is there anyone here who doesn't believe that if everyone in one of Joe Arpaio's jail were ever allowed to vote for Sheriff that Joe Arpaio wouldn't have received 100% of the vote from that jail?  Does anyone believe that if he only got 98% of the vote from his jail that 2% of those inmates would not get extra applesauce but would instead be performing oral sex on a cattle prod?  This notion is a giant gaping hole containing an unlimited amount of ass contraband. 

[Incredulity 11440]

7 minutes ago, Chooky said:

Is there anyone here who doesn't believe that if everyone in one of Joe Arpaio's jail were ever allowed to vote for Sheriff that Joe Arpaio wouldn't have received 100% of the vote from that jail?  Does anyone believe that if he only got 98% of the vote from his jail that 2% of those inmates would not get extra applesauce but would instead be performing oral sex on a cattle prod?  This notion is a giant gaping hole containing an unlimited amount of ass contraband. 

We certainly would see a lot more political grease to wardens.

[Poolflood 845]

On 4/26/2019 at 10:28 PM, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

So if these laws were spread during reconstruction, can we blame the yankee carpetbaggers Democrats for a good portion of this institutional racism stuff? 

Fixed

[Michael Knight 12852]

On 4/23/2019 at 8:13 AM, Celery Man said:

I could stand to think about it more, but what seems like the most compelling argument to giving currently imprisoned felons the right to vote would be better addressed by ending the war on drugs and dealing with racial injustice more head on.

perhaps we can't end the war on drugs because the people most directly impacted by it have 0 political power

[Celery Man 20832]

you think if prisoners had the vote, then there would be enough of a concentration of political power around the issue of criminal justice to effect change? i'm not really against this, certainly am not strongly against this, am definitely for stronger protections of voting rights and something top down to allow ex-felons to vote everywhere, stop shithead states from fucking with peoples' right to vote, do something about gerrymandering.  I wonder if tacking on voting for currently incarcerated felons will make those kinds of changes less likely to happen.

[bad_teammate 13115]

5 hours ago, Celery Man said:

I wonder if tacking on voting for currently incarcerated felons will make those kinds of changes less likely to happen.

The opposite.

All ideas are impossible until they are expressed. Once they are expressed, they have space in the imagination and then work on them can begin. If something like universal suffrage for released prisoners is desired, then all we need to do is talk about it and give it even more space to work by opening the conversation beyond it.

This is why radical changes seem to happen so quickly. Gay marriage was unthinkable 20 years ago, but it's the most passé concept now. It had to be openly demanded, then we had to chew on it, then it happened, and now we've accepted it to be just as normal as it was unthinkable.

Bernie going out there and shamelessly and fearlessly demanding full voting rights for all Americans, even monsters in prison, gives more space to every "compromise" position inbetween him and the far-right's authoritarian nightmare-hell.

[Celery Man 20832]

I agree with you about broaching the topic to the public as the first step to make it possible.  I think there's a difference in the moral imperative between gay marriage (granting rights to people who were denied them because they are different) and voting in prison (granting rights to people who were denied them because they were incarcerated).  But we can also abandon the idea that a moral imperative has any connection to getting widespread agreement on an issue in America.  If this is the right step to take to help undo some of the centuries of racial injustice in this country, I'm for it.  I'm not convinced yet, but it is an interesting topic.