I would immediately vote for this if they managed to get it on as a ballot initiative. Voting in a democracy is a right, not a privilege.
this post was submitted on 31 Jan 2024
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A right and a mandatory part of being in a society.
So, I think it's okay to, with limits, curtail rights for actively incarcerated persons. That's sorta what incarceration is.
I don't think we should restrict their right to vote, but I don't think it's immoral. It doesn't further any of the objectives of imprisonment, and it works against any of the non-cruel ones.
Ignoring that incarceration is, at best, grossly overused.
The thing is that restricting the right to vote opens the door for incarcerating segments of the population to suppress votes.
The Nixon administration did it when they made marijuana and cocaine schedule 1 (they literally admitted it was so they could charge black people and hippies with felonies).
Oh, I would agree. We shouldn't selectively enforce the law or shape the law to target specific groups. We shouldn't deny people the right to vote.
I just think it's a question of policy, not ethics.
The argument that the incarcerated should be able to vote because voting is a right is weak because they're already being stripped of rights as punishment following due process. "If we're denying you the right to be in the community, why would we let you keep the right to have a say in our community?".
Instead, it's better to focus on encouraging the incarcerated to be more constructively engaged in the community, which voting is one part of when coupled with civic awareness.
They're not denied the right to be a part of the community, they're merely restricted from moving freely within it. They still have social connections, family, and possessions. Most will eventually be released and regain their freedom, and when that happens they'll be living under laws passed during their incarceration.
Beyond that, democracy isn't just a policy choice, it is a system inherently based on the ethics of governance. You can't separate it out, because the foundation is that people have a right to contribute to the decisions that impact their lives. That's an ethical stance.
You're very much missing the point.
We, as a society, have decided that loosing some rights is a valid punishment for crimes.
Arguing that we shouldn't do something because it's an example of something we already do is a weak argument.
People hear that argument and say "well, loosing the ability to participate in democracy is just part of the punishment, like being locked in a cell. They shouldn't have committed the crime if they wanted to vote".
The better argument is that it doesn't make sense to cut people off from something we want them to be better engaged with.
I'm not saying don't let them vote, I think we should. I'm saying you won't convince people by saying it's a violation of their rights because we've already decided that they have less rights as a punishment.
So it's not a question of if we can violate their rights or not. That's settled. We can and we will. So we need to argue that as a policy, this right should not be restricted because it's counter productive.
I didn't miss your point, you made a statement about ethics that was wrong and then just ignored everything else. The right to vote is an ethical one and should not be abridged. Other rights are lost either because retracting them is essential to protecting society and encouraging rehabilitation or because we just want to make them suffer. The former is ethical, the latter is not, and in the latter category few are as fundamentally unjust as removing the right to vote, particularly because extending or expanding this deprivation can and is used for political oppression against entire categories of people.
Arguing that we shouldn’t do something because it’s an example of something we already do is a weak argument.
This is literally the argument you're making, jfc.
Removing the rights of felons is disgusting, I fully support that felons right to vote. They are still human, they are still a citizen, the fact that we treat them subhuman is horrid.
Also, slavery is still legal in the United States if you are incarcerated, it is an exception in the amendment.