given how little one vote matter, it seems to me that stripping felons of their right to vote is both petty and counterproductive if the point was to reform them into civic minded individuals ?
Also, seems kind of scary that this implies a future where so many people are in prison that their vote could actually tip the balance ?
It’s the nature of democracy that one vote equals 1/N of the population. That is not flaw with the individual. It just means that for his vote to actually means something, it has to be part of a social memetic arrangements and not cast in the abstract.
Of course with first past the post, the electoral colege, gerrymandering all conspiring to further devalue and skew the value of one vote, democratic voting becomes increasingly meaningless. This is not a flaw of the individual but of the system itself being corrupt.
And then we have yet another layer of disenfranchisement, which is republicanism, in which voters do not directly vote for their interest but vote for an agent which will have a long term in which to “interpret” whatever the electorate really meant by voting for him. He will do so in a space where the constantly fluctuating social memetic arrangements that got him elected are not really under his control and are only loosely, and shortly affected by his action.
This is because the control of the fluctuating social memetic arrangement is in the hand of the actual social elite, the people who own or have seized the megaphone of power and who grossly compete and collude. Largely to maintain the arrangement, usually in an uneasy peace with their immediate competitors. These people are not just politicials but media moguls, celebrities and other billionaires.
Any solution to this problem must look to the system as a whole and create incentives to the individual that will enable him to at least have his 1/N power over the state of things. Free of the influence of the actual social elite who fill his heads with ideas that benefit them rather than the individual. And in a way where individual can act collectively for their interests.
Not just voting but having that blot on the record FOREVER puts a scarlet letter on their forehead. Good luck getting a good job and having a future when you’ve been in prison a few years for a nonviolent drug crime that should’ve been solved with a few weeks/months of inpatient rehab. Our entire criminal justice system in the US just breeds more crime and generational cyclical poverty. Hooray.
1 vote on its own doesn’t matter, however, the collective vote of undesirables in a country with the highest incarceration rate on earth could really fuck shit up for the elites who seek to control the population.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I believe recidivism is a real problem and that my brother got on the straight and narrow perhaps just as much inspite of his 4 years in prison as because of.
You’re assuming that the point of the American justice system IS to refrain and rehabilitate. It’s not.
A for-profit prison system seriously is low-key the most fucked up thing in a country full of fucked up things.
American prisons exist to make a profit for their investors. They do this by both government subsidies (which are calculated per inmate) and using the prisoners as cheap labor that they legally only have to pay pennies.
The system NEEDS a continuous influx of prisoners (slaves) to remain profitable. Rehabilitation is anathema to that.
That title needs a lot of editing. It does end in a question mark, but it’s structured like a statement. Even if it is a question, it appears that your asking if it seems that way way to you. How is anyone else supposed to know how it seems to you?
It’s almost like they shouldn’t be counted at all unless they are free to vote. But the states with significant prison populations wouldn’t go for that. Maybe we can compromise. Perhaps only 3 out of every 5 disenfranchised prisoners should count for representation purposes.
You’d have to eliminate children and immigrants too if you did that, but those new numbers wouldn’t reflect reality in most communities with so many people being excluded from the census.
Small quibble here, but illegal immigrants are absolutely counted in the census, obviously they are under-counted, but they are intended to be counted. No one is “excluded” from the census.
Small quibble, but the census came up with about 331 million people, and there are almost 8 billion people on the planet. Clearly, some are excluded from the census.
Within my facetious response is a kernel of truth: some of those people within US borders are foreign tourists. Surely, a French high school class touring Washington DC shouldn’t be counted on the census.
When someone overstays their visa, at what point do they stop being “foreign persons” and start being “undocumented Americans”? At what point is it reasonable to start counting them as our own?
I was more referring to green card holders, but that’s exactly my point. By excluding people based on whether they can vote or not, you get inaccurate results and make the whole process pointless.
The only problem there is that the count also determines how federal money is distributed. Undocumented/illegal immigrants still use interstates and water mains and disaster money and national parks and federal buildings. Unless we want funding cut, we still have to count them.
*Edit: I’m embarrassed that I got all that written before 3/5 hit me. “The only problem” 😬
Oh shit, I never even thought about that. It’s another level of insidious. 1. Be republican 2. Get a huge prison in your district “for the jobs”, 3. Get more positions guaranteed to be republican, since the voters in your district still are. Would work for a democrat too, they don’t care about criminal justice reform either :(
Might work slightly better for republicans because they can work the identity politics angle more easily.
If people who break laws can’t vote, and the government decides what the law is and appoints the judges who enforce those laws, then the government currently in power can decide who gets to vote. Obviously there’s an incentive there to make laws that disproportionately affect those who weren’t going to vote for you, and thereby remove most of your opposition’s votes. That way lies dictatorship.
It also makes it hard to change bad laws. For a random example, there used to be laws against homosexuality. How do you think LGBT acceptance in law would be doing if anyone who was openly gay or trans lost their right to vote? How do you improve access to abortion if anyone who has an abortion, provides an abortion, teaches young people about abortion, or seeks information about abortions becomes unable to vote? How do you change any unjust law if the only people who can vote are those who are unaffected - or indeed, those who benefit from the status quo?
The GOP has been working towards making the US a dictatorship since the 60s. We passed the civil rights act and the right was so appalled that they had to treat people of color like, well, people, that they’ve been coming up with new ways to ensure progress never happens again ever since.
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