Pete Buttigieg Says Incarcerated People Shouldn't Get to Vote
48 replies, posted
It only takes one person to kill with a firearm but it takes a statistical majority to win a election. To compare the effects of the individual between the two is a poor comparision.
The difference is what is the person who is a felon going to vote for?
"Haha, I'll show them all... I will vote for...more crime!"
That's...not how voting works.
Felons are also not super-villains.
think of it like the american interpretation of free speech. in theory, it dictates that you ensure the right to everyone, whether or not they're terrible people, whether or not their words have a positive effect on society, because it deems the pitfalls of restricting it to be worse than the pitfalls of allowing it.
Step 1: Don't allow felons to vote.
Step 2: Make laws that incarcerate people from the opposition proportionally more.
Not really, we have retributive justice which is in essence "eye for an eye" that's less barbaric. Judges still give punishments in proportion to the severity of the offense. Capital punishment still exists. Being a sex offender will stick with you forever, even if you are rehabilitated and are of no threat. That's all retributive. Taking away voting rights from the severe prisoner isn't to rehabilitate them. I don't care for rehabilitating extreme offenders. The safest place to keep them is out of society, and they should have no grip of any form on government.
I don't mean to say I don't believe in rehabilitation period, there are some people that can certainly be rehabilitated and I'm all for that. But I definitely don't believe everyone has that capacity.
It depends on the severity of the crime, only the most severe felons deserve to lose their right to vote. I'm ok with felons keeping their right for victim-less, non-violent, or low tier crimes. So high incarceration rate is redundant. I don't care if you got caught smoking weed, were speeding, or shoplifting from Walmart you can vote. I just don't want convicted, proven maniacs voting even if they are a statistically insignificant part of the population. I didn't invent this hypothetical to use as some boogeyman to scare you into taking away their rights. I used it as an example of something heinous enough, that isn't hard to imagine, to warrant the loss of the right to vote.
Can't wait for Trump 2020, the DNC to wonder how they could possibly have fucked it up this time, and Dems to blame progressives.
Actually I can wait forever for that please god let it end
In a poll, 20% of Bernie voters said that if Bernie isn't the Democrat candidate then they'll vote for Trump. So... yes, yes it is.
If felons are taxed, they should be represented.
If felons are impacted by policies, they should be able to vote against those policies.
Just like felons are still entitled to (among other things) :
Self defense, even if their crime was violent.
Free speech, even if their crime involved abusing speech.
A legal defense, even if they killed a lawyer.
Protection under the law, even if they shot a cop.
Bodily autonomy (once released, though I of course think that caveat shouldn't exist. Slavery is wrong.)
All these rights have hypothetical "eye for an eye" arguments for stripping them. Except it simply does not work that way.
"we strip other rights" is not a real argument. You have to examine why those rights are stripped. It's not a simple game of "okay sweet they committed a crime so they're entitled to absolutely nothing now"
That's exactly what I'm saying. Do you have an argument against that?
I honestly think the only felons that should not vote are those that have committed some form of voter fraud or have been charged and convicted for bribery. Not because they shouldn't be able to vote but because they've shown that they're fully willing to deny the rights and voices of others through illicit activities.
It's not really an argument for letting the incarcerated vote. It's an argument for a) nuance where we decide if a lesser tier of criminal (with crimes that are victimless and such) retains their right to vote in order to preserve some kind of black voting bloc integrity b) devolution in american politics to where an individual's interests is not contingent on that of a race. As it stands, you are just trading one evil for another: some sort of indirect and disparate impact on blacks that relates to their power in a government that affects all with the idea citizens who play by the rules should be competing in a democracy with those who have been excised from civil society for violating it and (usually) the people within it.
It's really funny that counter arguments for letting printers vote is almost always just "what if a kid with cancer wanted to say the n-word" but with letting charles manson vote
America's first open openly Republican gay presidential candidate.
I disagree that misrepresentation infringes the rights of people that do vote. Your logic only makes sense if the political party is entitled to votes it did not get, but had the potential of getting. There are a significant population of eligible voters in the US that choose not to vote. In 2016, this population had a sizable number of democrats that didn't vote, this is also misrepresentation. Under your logic, the democratic party has a right to these votes because these people who chose not to vote are contributing to misrepresentation, therefore these people are infringing the rights of those that did vote. The only thing you can do to fix this is force every eligible voter to vote, which is against a voter's right not to vote. There is a contradiction of rights here; you cannot conclude that misrepresentation infringes the rights of those that voted.
The fact of the matter is, you are only entitled to what you count in, period. Every eligible voter gets 1 vote and their rights are not being infringed unless they are impeded from making that one vote. If I sit my lazy ass at home and choose not to vote, I am contributing to misrepresentation, but I'm not stopping you from voting.
You can't say that denying a felons right to vote infringes on other voter's rights because of misrepresentation. If a felon chose not to vote, the misrepresentation is still happening and the voter's rights are still being infringed. You haven't actually solved the problem.
Some countries, like Australia I think have compulsory voting. I agree with it honestly. A lot of people can't get time off work to vote here, or have transportation issues, or other things.
If people REALLY don't want to vote they can spoil their ballot, which a) government can't do anything about, and b) is probably legal anyway, but most people I would think would decide to vote if they actually got to the polls.
Okay, so what you're saying is that you're okay with a political party removing the right to vote from felons and prisoners before making laws that disproportionately jail the opposition's voter base.
All this, while still failing to provide any reasonable argument as to why this right should be removed in the first place, and what purpose it would serve.
You just don't give a shit about a blatant and grave assault on democracy, simply because you believe in some archaic, retributive form of justice. You know you're on the wrong side of a debate when you have to invoke the existence of capital punishment (which pretty much every developed country has abolished) to justify your stance.
This also goes to the root of why we have the electoral college in the first place: So that the voters in states with large numbers of disenfranchised people (in those days it was slaves, women, etc., nowadays it’s prisoners and other groups) can vote using the power that those voters would have exercised. It’s the solution of how to take away certain people’s voices, without giving up the political power that comes with their numbers, instead stealing it and redistributing it to the people that you do let have a voice. The three fifths compromise was just one half of the equation.
No one outright said that prisoners would be voting for the democrats, but we all coincidentally happen to be aware that voter turnout in any capacity tends to favor them. Most recognize that republican policy is designed to prevent voter turnout, maximize gerrymandering, etc. Your comment is implicit acknowledgement of this reality. Have to love those thinly veiled "voter fraud prevention" policies republicans push in states like KS. Impoverished voters with a distinct lack of access to nearby polling places, transportation, time to vote are not lazy. In a time where the vast majority of the country must work two jobs at a minimum wage salary to pay rent, your statement is disgustingly ignorant. Childcare is inaccessible for most, hours are long, polling places are made to be far away when the voters are expected vote contrary to the interests of the party running the voting commission.
Democrats aren't owed the votes of non-participants, but there's an obvious argument to be made that voter participation would increase and that democrats would benefit from a change in law that increases turnout indirectly. There's a reason Mitch et al. want to prevent the creation of a holiday for the vote, or even guaranteed leave.
Your last argument is unintelligible. Their heads are being counted for census purposes giving effective increases in weight to the voters in areas that maintain prisons. The reality is that those voters are overwhelmingly coming from blue collar backgrounds and impoverished conditions. Unless their views are coincidentally aligned with those of the area their prison is found in, they are being under-represented. "Punishment" is not a modern approach to justice. More effective, cost effective policy options exist that reduce recidivism and improve quality of life for offenders and the public at large. Republicans talk about wanting to be fiscally responsible, then turn around and support policies that accomplish nothing other than facilitating the accumulation of wealth by the elite.
Context matters. Do you deny the history of class conflict in our country? The long history of minority voter suppression, intimidation? The use of prisons to manipulate the vote should not come as a surprise to anyone. The motivation is clear.
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