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 ?
What? Just because they want people punished instead of rehabilitated does not mean that everyone should get capital punishment. What kind of weird straw man is that?
Given the rights prisoners have in many other countries, it might be better to say that things are just as bad in the US as the media paints other countries.
Because, uh, prison labour is pretty fucking awful, especially when considering that y'all gots them private prisons down there.
I believe the same is true in Vermont and Maine, but 2 out of 50 isn’t great.
If you can take away the right to vote as punishment for a crime, and make anything a crime, then you can take away anyone’s right to vote. This reinforces the concept of the ‘precariat’.
One vote might not matter much, but 4.6 million votes can swing elections. It’s really fucking weird how that country calls itself a democracy when it does this, allows rampant gerrymandering, have a very uneven vote weight depending on where you live, and, just as icing on the cake, allows slavery in some specific instances.
Currently China, per capita El Salvador. US scores second most population wise (3rd most populous country, so it's not that unreasonable?) and 5th per capita (No excuse).
The US appears to have been slowly going down a little bit, some times when it feels like it, more so if you're white, with a big drop during Covid.
Interesting. I can imagine China’s high rate of incarceration is due to the CCCP and El Salvador is due to the cartels. Wonder how many of those in prison in the US are there for pretty drug crimes though…
Creating a class of prison slaves who have no right to vote with no possibility of upward mobility is a feature, not a bug. Add to that the difficulty of obtaining affordable healthcare/tying it to a job, gutting education, making child labor legal, making abortion illegal, etc., etc., and that plan becomes pretty obvious.
It’s a recipe for creating monsters similar to how intervention in the middle east created those terrorists and their symbiotic relationship with the military industrial complex. That plan is so ridiculously evil and doomed to fail that I can’t help but think there’s some second order effect that they’re going for here.
The monsters aren't the ones being created, the monsters are the ones creating those circumstances to begin with.
I know you didn't mean anything by it, but that shift in focus is really important to point out, because those same people rely on you and me to see the poor people who's lives they destroyed as the problem, instead of whose who really are.
None of that changes the fact that it is the system that creates that kind of behaviour by encouraging and rewarding selfishness, greed, hate, and doing whatever it takes to "succeed".
I'm not denying that there are horrible people out there (I've been victim to a few personally), or that they shouldn't be held responsible for individual actions if they harm others (they should), but in almost all cases you can't blame them for turning out that way (again, not excusing any harm they go on to cause to others) when you look at the circumstances they need to exist in. Circumstances designed by a handful of people reaping unfathomable benefits.
So I'd much sooner point my finger at those who are actually to blame, instead of at those who are the fucked up products of their system, because one of those not only creates infinitely more damage than the other, but also it's only that same group that have the power to do anything to stop it.
I don’t know what you are talking about. I am assuming you are talking about the USA.
Why would both be considered bad, but one least bad than the other? Having only two major parties makes for little choices, but why you think its never a good choice?
From what I can grasp from here in Europe, the current president Biden is not bad at all.
I live in Europe, even with more parties it’s still a matter of “least bad” usually - like here in Sweden I find it really hard to find a party that is anti-religion, anti-monarchy and pro-science and education but also not lenient on violent gang crime and open borders. I also disagree greatly with the current unfair rent control system and the high income taxes (with no property, land or inheritance taxes), but there is literally no party that covers even just those 3-4 issues in the same way (and there are like 5 or 6 viable parties!).
I think the bigger issue with Biden is that there’s just no change at all - no attempt to solve the biggest day-to-day issues of heatlhcare, housing and education. And from the point of view of Europe, Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has been terrible, directly subsidising industry to move to the US, right when Europe is struggling with the Russian gas crisis and the pipelines were bombed, etc.
I hate it when people say that I’m “throwing my vote away by voting for a 3rd party”. If everyone voted for the person they actually liked, rather than the person who’s likely to beat the other large party, maybe we’d see some better choices.
Not always, could be for drug possession, vandalism, identity theft, fraud, blackmail, obstruction of justice, and so on. There are a lot of nonviolent felonies that land you in the same pool as murderers and rapists.
The rationale is if you make a specific population you don’t like extremely likely to get felonies due to scenarios you place them in you can prevent millions of people from voting. It’s one of many ways the US creates second class citizens and cheap (basically free) labor. Wildfires in California are fought by people in prison, products are made by them too.
The US loves cheap/free (slave) labor and removing the chance to vote and change these unjust laws benefits the oppressors much like preventing enslaved people from learning to read
I believe it to be a short-sited thing, but honestly necessary. This is due to the very large range of federal convictions. It goes from having some pot on you, to armed robbery and murder. I don’t agree that those things should necessarily (case by case) include the same voting restrictions, but there is no way the US government is going to take the time to separate the “worse” crimes from the “lesser”. And, as has been mentioned before the goal of the US penal system is (sadly) not rehabilitation. As long as the government has that attitude, it will never change. You lose more than just the right to vote as a felon, btw. The rights most often curtailed include the right to vote and hold public office, employment rights, domestic rights, and financial and contractual rights.
It already separates crimes by sentancing. in the UK if your prison sentence is less than 2 years then you can vote from prison. (Also once your have served your time (including being out on probation/license) you can vote.
You still don’t explain why it’s, in your opinion, necessary to remove voting rights.
You put that it they shouldn’t remove those for small infractions, but that the administration can’t decide on a line where voting restrictions should be put, and therefore just blanket bans every from from voting.
Also it’s somehow ok that after people have finished their punishment, they should be punished some more by stripping them off even more rights.
All of that greatly reduces chances of rehabilitation and keeps criminals in the criminal sector. I fail to see why even minor infractions should lead to lifelong consequences.
It’s necessary because our government is stupid, slow, and can’t make great choices. I should have clarified that it is deemed necessary by the government because they’ll never make the decisions to back it up. I don’t like it, and I never will. I typed that from the flawed perspective of government and should have worded it better.
That’s not the point. If everyone believes their one vote doesn’t matter then yes, continue on with this futile thinking as it will surely not make a difference.
Ideally, it is one divided by population. In practice, because of the electoral college, and because money is speech are corporation are people, it is still way way less than 0.000’000’003
What could go wrong with giving a democratic government the power to strip voting rights from those people they deem unsuitable to vote on how they are governed? /s
There are two tricky parts that come with allowing prisoners to vote that must be considered. Not hard stops, but just additional dynamics that will be in place.
Prisoners have little to no autonomy, and can therefore be easily coerced into voting a certain way. If the warden/prison staff lean conservative and they hear that a certain prisoner voted liberal, that prisoner is vulnerable to reprisal. There would need to be an additional entity present in prisons to enforce privacy of voting results. But how do we guarantee that this government entity won’t just collude with the other government entity running the prison?
There may be problems in terms of where these votes are counted for. One way to protect the anonymity of prison votes is to pool them among the district that houses the prison. But do we let the prisoners vote for local candidates/laws when they are not locals? In many cases, prisons are located in very small towns and may therefore significantly skew local elections if they participate in them. So does everyone get an absentee ballot for their place of origin instead? Even if the duration of their sentence means they are likely never to go back there? Or do prisoners only get to vote on items/candidates at the federal level?
The prisoners are counted by the census as citizens of the county/municipality in which they are held. Because population determines the number of seats in the House of Representatives I put forth that they should be allowed to vote in the county and municipalities which claim them as citizens. If they are not allowed to vote they should not count towards population for Representation in the House since they are not being represented.
There are already enough potential voters who have been imprisoned, not the future, such that they could tip the balance. If you’re not sure if this is case, just look at how hard the GOP acts to block reinstatement of voting rights for ex felons.
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.
Add comment