2y ago

Rep. Pressley introduces legislation to guarantee right to vote for people with felonies on record

Rep. Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont submitted the legislation, named the Inclusive Democracy Act, on Tuesday which would guarantee the right to vote in federal elections for all citizens regardless of their criminal record.

In a statement, Pressley said the legislation was necessary due to policies and court rulings that “continue to disenfranchise voters from all walks of life — including by gutting the Voting Rights Act, gerrymandering, cuts to early voting, and more.” Welch called the bill necessary due to “antiquated state felony disenfranchisement laws.”

In late 2022, approximately 4.6 million people were unable to vote due to a felony conviction, according to a study by the Sentencing Project, a nonpartisan research group. The same study found that Black and Hispanic citizens are disproportionately likely to be disenfranchised due to felony

83 comments

Convicted of drug crime? Should never lose right to vote.
Convicted of violent crime? Should regain right to vote upon release.
Convicted of trying to overturn an election? Never get to vote again.
- They should all be able to vote. From prison, too. The punishment never needs to be to take their voting rights away. If they commit fraud, stop them from committing fraud again.
  
  I think if you're overthrowing the government, you're basically tapping out of the democracy. That's literally the only crime I could see not being allowed to vote. I also think they should be removed from the country they tried to destroy. But then I have no idea how would they remain detained in that situation.
  
  I'd prefer compulsory voting from all able people of voting age. Prisons should have full in-person voting locations with private voting booths. Mail-in ballots should be a freely available option for all.
  It doesn't guarantee good results, but I feel it is the most straightforward way to rid ourselves of voter suppression campaigns, which I think are fundamentally evil.
- I disagree with this approach without even touching the morality aspect.
  There should be no way to lose your voting rights once you are of age and a citizen of the US for the very simple reason of limiting the bureaucratic overhead of elections. If every citizen above the age of 18 can vote, you can just completely remove the ridiculous notion of "voter registration".
  Just register everyone based on their legal address (which the government should have anyway because taxes). Just like a real democracy.
  
  I agree with this.
  Even people who make mistakes should be entitled to vote. Even while paying for their mistakes frankly. They may have lost their freedom, but they are still citizens of the Republic.
  The only compelling argument I know of is that voting in local elections is a mess because there would be counties that'd suffer from the over representation due to the location of the prisons. I would just consider those to be absentee voters myself, and they just keep the last address they had before going in or next if kin instead.
  Just my thoughts
- But muh rights?
- I disagree with violent crime, they should entirely lose the right to vote. There's no room in our society for behavior like that
  
  I got a felony 14 years ago for running from a cop. He got a scratch on his hand and charged me with aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer. Bogus public defender didn't even help try to fight for me and their charges stuck like glue.
  
  If the number of violent criminals in your society is enough to affect the outcome of an election, you've got much bigger problems. And if you take away the right to vote for violent crimes, politicians will attempt to redefine what "violent" means to disenfranchise more people.
  
  Keeping a person out of our society is not done by revoking the right to vote, it's done by giving them a life sentence.
  
  Are people capable of changing?
  
  What about white collars that steal so much money they literally ruin people's lives?
  Please engage with me.
  
  I don't know why you think the people who commit financial crimes should be able to vote then.
If the person has paid by doing their sentence and are in good faith trying to integrate into society, they should be able to vote.
Except traitors and or domestic terrorists, they can go fuck themselves.
- Honestly even those should be able to vote. If there are enough to actually win an election, then the area in question has a problem regardless, and if not, then the only actually consequencential effect of forbidding it would be that unscrupulous political groups could try and declare their enemies traitorous to try to disenfranchise them.
- No taxation without representation.
  
  Democracy is a social contract. If you break the terms of the contract by attempting to overthrow democracy, you lose the rights afforded by that contract, like voting.
- Even people in jail should be allowed to vote. Wtf!
What third world shit is that? You can't vote if you've been convicted of a felony? That's some medieval thinking right there, god the US is a hopeless barbaric mess only thinly disguised as a democracy.
- It gets worse. Many of the felony disenfranchisement laws originate from the civil war era. Combine that with the 13th amendment still allowing slavery as a punishment for crime and you can take a guess who was overwhelmingly targeted.
  
  13th amusement
  This sounds like fun.
- You can run for president but you can't vote
- Yes you fucking can, in fact, voting rights is just about the easiest right to restore once your off paper and paid all your restitution and fines. (Which can be goddam hard. But it is doable.)
  Source; I'm an ex fucking convict lol. I'll have my gun rights back next year if all goes well.
  
  This depends on the state.
  Some states automatically let you vote.
  A few wouldn't let you vote at all.
What rational argument is there for citizens to lose their right to vote?
Say you lose your right to vote over possession of drugs. Why? You shouldn't you have representation?
While in prison you become slave labor. For profit prisons get money for housing and feeding you. They get money from the contracted work you do. They double and triple dip profits. There's all kinds of under the table deals being done on your back. But why did you lose your right to vote? It all goes back to controlling certain groups of the population. That's where it started, that's where it still is. Sure, restrict gun ownership for felons, that's a constitutional right that has long needed overhaul for so many reasons, but the right to vote, why??
- The cynic in me points to the demographic makeup of those who are in prison or have a criminal record. This is continued systemic racism and the cruelty is the point.
- I'd point to the non-war-on-drugs felony charges as better examples of the kinds of crimes that make sense to take voting away over. CSAM, massive tax fraud, terrorism, mass violence, particularly heinous yet targeted violence, forcing an altered state of mind onto others via unknown substances,
  The kinda heinous sociopathic shit that marks a clear disregard for the social contract.
  Broadly I disagree with the notion of there being a crime you never finish atoning for, but I can understand why people might hesitate to bring the gates down for folks who've committed such acts even after long periods of reform.
Problem is, that would be for federal crimes ionly. But, the biggest problem is that states write the rules for all elections, not the feds
- Currently, no US state blanket bans the right to vote for felons. There are different variations of when you get the right back, but permanent removal is for specific felonies.
In late 2022, approximately 4.6 million people were unable to vote due to a felony conviction
Holy shit America! WTF??? That's over 2% of the adult population!
- You're off by a bit. But what's 10x between us friends?
  https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/08/united-states-adult-population-grew-faster-than-nations-total-population-from-2010-to-2020.html
  258.3 million adults, so more like 1.7%. (Still too high, though)
  
  I suck at math obviously.
  Thanks for the correction.
  
  How many eligible voters though?
- Of what country? Canada?
  (that math gives America 23 million adults; I think you mean 2%)
  
  Yup. Corrected now.
- Yeah, it gets worse when you start looking at demographics.
Good. It is unlikely that there would be enough criminals, guilty of any crime actually worthy of being such, to successfully legalize that crime even if they wanted to (and for any reasonable crime most probably wouldn't even want such, even theives don't want to be stolen from). As such, there isn't any particular risk in letting felons vote. However, not letting them do so allows laws to be weaponized to disenfranchise people
I'm fine with incarcerated felons not voting. But they should have a pathway to voting when they're released. Maybe immediately upon release, or after probation. Something.
- Let them vote in prison too!
  They actually have the time to get politically informed.
  
  Esp. because if you have enough people in prison that the results of elections would regularly depend on their votes your main problem is not prisoners voting or not, its having too many prisoners.
  
  I disagree if only for the sake of avoiding the absolute deluge of "politicians are all criminals!" jokes that encouraging prisoner political engagement could bring about
new demographic launched LEZZZ GO
Being forced to pay taxes while not having the right to vote is taxation without representation - the exact thing we created America over.
Donald Trump supports this legislation.
- And? Just because a terrible person supports something, doesn't mean it is bad.
  
  Because he will be a felon, of course.
- I don't think he cares about his own right to vote...
  I think the only time he's ever voted were when he was performatively voting for himself.
  
  No, he voted for Bill back in the day.
- And ofc the name checks out.
I can't tell if that is a generic male or female. Female??
- No, I'm just genuinely unable to tell and thus curious. But I guess a person can't even question this stuff our society is so insane now.
  The bill itself means nothing to me.

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