RedCelt69 wrote:For reasons too complicated to cover here, in the US (in particular) black people tend towards criminality more than white people. Denying criminals (or felons) the right to vote is a racial veto. I'll take a guess and suggest that Republicans are more in favour of that premise than Democrats.
I'd suggest that when it comes to denying felons the right to vote, there isn't much difference between the parties. As a nation we have this perverted sense that we have to be tough on crime, and so criminal sentences have been getting longer and longer and more and more things are being criminalised. Japan, which has the lowest recidivism rate in the developed world has a criminal justice system that was more or less copied from ours in the 50s. We, meanwhile, have effectively scrapped our old criminal justice system and now have the highest incarceration percentage in the world and the highest recidivism rate in the developed world, in part because it's become extremely difficult for ex-felons to re-enter society both because of the length of prison terms rendering them unaccustomed to life on the 'outside' and because of the many restrictions placed on them in regards to employment, where they can live, and what hobbies they can pursue (for instance, the community theatre I am involved with refuses, point blank, to allow any ex-felons to participate in any capacity whatsoever). These changes have occurred in red states and blue states, under governments of both parties.
In a society where the colour of your skin doesn't make you more likely to end up as a criminal, that policy might be more defendable. At the moment, regardless of any other argument wrt the rights and wrongs of denying the vote to particular non-citizens, it isn't a policy that can be rationally defended.
Historically, lots of things make sense. Plato couldn't condemn the treatment of slaves as property because it made sense for society to have unpaid workers who weren't as human as their owners. It made sense. Historically.
Not trying to defend it, just explain it. Also, comparing taking the vote from felons to slavery is a bit of a stretch. Freedom is a natural right that has to be taken away. Voting is a political right that has to be given. I really don't have the heart for a big philosophical discussion about rights and all that, but surely you can acknowledge that there is a difference between an inherent right and a given right?
That's exactly what democracy is; mob rule. The steps which are implemented to prevent the minority from being persecuted by the majority aren't democratic steps. They're anti-democratic.
Are you agreeing with me here, or taking the piss? If you're agreeing with me then we have an interesting problem... if we accept that anti-democratic principles are necessarily followed for the good of society then we've arrived at a belief that the good of society can trump democratic ideals. If that's so, then there is no ideological reason not to take the vote away from felons, only a practical one. If it can be argued that doing so is good for the society, then no problem. Or if you start from the original premise that the vote should only be extended to those who have (nominally) passed some sort of competency standard, then regarding criminalism as incompetence is fine.
The problem, if it is a problem, is that we live in societies where voting is regarded as a right of citizenship and where the number of people serving felony sentences is much larger than before (both because we execute less felons, less quickly, and because the number of felonies has increased). Now, maybe taking the vote away doesn't make sense, since telling a man who drunk drove three times in his 20s that he can't vote when he's 55 and a pillar of the community (since some US states
never return the right to vote) is a bit off.
This really highlights what I consider to be the relativistic nature of policy... many policies can make sense in one context and not make sense in another (ie. when voting is already a restricted right and most felons are executed quickly and all felonies are for very serious crimes, taking the vote away from felons makes sense but when most felons aren't executed and many felonies aren't such serious crimes anymore and voting is generally not that restricted, then taking the vote from felons may not make sense), especially when they aren't moral questions. And if you accept that voting isn't a natural right and that restrictions on democracy are necessary to not end up living in a chaotic dystopia, then felons voting isn't an absolute moral question... it can still be, and should be, a utilitarian question.
Man is free; yet we must not suppose that he is at liberty to do everything he pleases, for he becomes a slave the moment he allows his actions to be ruled by passion. --Giacomo Casanova