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Felon Voting - Pros & Cons - ProCon.org Home More IssuesFAQs Teachers’ Corner Felon Voting Should Felons Regain the Right to Vote? Last updated on: 6/29/2023 | Author: ProCon.org History of Felon Voting While felony crimes differ from U.S. state to state, these serious, often violent crimes include arson, assault, battery, burglary, child endangerment, domestic assault, drug dealing, fraud, kidnapping, manslaughter, murder, rape, robbery, and stalking. In the United States, as Encyclopaedia Britannica explains, a felony is typically punishable by a term of imprisonment of one year or more. Misdemeanors are often defined as offenses punishable only by fines or by short terms of imprisonment in local jails.” Further, for a felony conviction, the offender may lose some civil rights. These vary from state to state, but they usually include the right to own or possess firearms , the right to vote, and the right to hold public office.” Read more history… Pro & Con Arguments Pro 1 Contributing to the law-making process is an essential step in a felon’s reintegration into society. Some 85% of American voters believe that the criminal justice system should focus on rehabilitating people to become productive law-abiding citizens,” according to an Aug. 2022 poll. [ 13 ] Social contract theory says that people live together in society in accordance with an agreement that establishes moral and political rules of behavior,” explains Ethics Unwrapped. Some believe felons have irrevocably broken that contract, but the reality is that not everyone who breaks the social contract by committing crimes is disenfranchised. Consider criminals who enter plea deals instead of serving prison time, or those who commit misdemeanors. Further, the social contract depends upon restoration of benefits in order to help the person reenter the contract. [ 14 ] Thus, disenfranchisement is not an appropriate method of ensuring someone becomes a good citizen again. As journalist Chandra Bozelko explains, Voting is a right that belongs to all citizens, not just good or reformed ones. Denying citizens their rights isn’t an appropriate form of accountability because citizen status can’t be punished out of someone. [I]t’s not punishment. It’s power-stripping.” [ 15 ] Further, regardless of whether the punishment is appropriate, the punishment does not work. Felony disenfranchisement has not lowered crime rates. Instead, the states with re-enfranchisement policies have lower crime rates and fewer felons per capita. [ 16 ] Re-enfranchisement policies not only allow people convicted of felonies to vote, they have a positive ripple effect, allowing people to be involved in their communities while feeling valued. As explained by Colie Lavar Long, who voted for the first time from a D.C. prison, I’ve been locked up 26 years on the fringes of existence. So when I actually … checked that box, and they actually said that he won—this person I voted for—it reaffirmed that I’m worthy to be back in society.” [ 17 ] Studies have also shown connections between re-enfranchisement and the reduced likelihood of returning to prison (recidivism). If recidivism is due in part to not being able to fully sustain one’s livelihood and fully integrate into the community by accessing key resources like housing and employment, then it would stand to reason that being barred from the vote would also be a barrier to full reintegration,” offers journalist Tamar Sarai. [ 17 ] Read More Pro 2 Disenfranchisement is a denial of a right and a form of racial discrimination. You can’t look at the history of slavery and Jim Crow and the current fact of felony disenfranchisement without seeing it as a direct legacy of those original systems,” argues Amy Fettig, Executive Director of The Sentencing Project. It was very deliberate, there’s no question. White people in power knew if you wanted to marginalize Black people and people of color and exclude them from political power, you can use the system to ‘legitimize’ reasons to take rights away…. [B]ut there’s no reason that laws can’t be used to target other groups. If we allow disenfranchisement to be used against one group of people, what’s going to stop people in power from targeting anyone else?” [ 18 ] The war on drugs, sentencing laws, and discretionary prosecution” have led to the mass incarceration of Black men in particular. In turn, studies have shown that the greater the nonwhite prison population, the more likely a state will ban convicted felons from voting.” As a result, explains lawyer Giovanni Padilla, whether it be for strictly political reasons, racial biases, or a mixture of both, felon disenfranchisement provisions have had the effect of keeping Black Americans in limited positions of power with limited ability to elect politicians of their choice and with little opportunity to be a part of the democracy that was promised to them.” [ 19 ] About 4.6 million Americans (2% of the population) could not vote in 2022 due to felony disenfranchisement laws. However, more than 5% of the Black voting age population was disenfranchised nationally, compared to 1.5% of all other races. More than 10% of Black adults suffer disenfranchisement in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Virginia. [ 20 ] Not only does felony disenfranchisement prevent more Black citizens from voting, it also affects the overall health of their communities. As a 2022 study concludes, racialized felony disenfranchisement is associated with worse physical and mental health among Black Americans.” Thus, enacting laws to dismantle racialized felony disenfranchisement would likely improve the health of Black people and make progress toward achieving health equity.” [ 21 ] Read More Pro 3 ​​It’s undemocratic to deny the vote to adults who pay taxes, regardless of their past​.​ In response to the 1765 Stamp Act , American colonists famously argued that taxation without representation” was tyranny. The act was the first British parliamentary attempt to raise revenue through direct taxation of all colonial commercial and legal papers, newspapers, pamphlets, cards, almanacs, and dice.” [ 22 ] [ 36 ] John Adams believed this tax to be unconstitutional. We have always understood it to be a grand and fundamental principle of the constitution that no freeman should be subject to any tax to which he has not given his own consent, in person or by proxy.” [ 22 ] The resulting protests eventually coalesced into the American Revolution (1775-83). And, yet, as if ignoring this founding principle of the country, many with felony convictions who pay taxes are denied their representation because they are denied their right to vote. According to the Internal Revenue Service, the government office tasked with collecting taxes, Incarceration neither changes one’s obligation to pay taxes and tax debts nor prohibits the receipt of tax credits and deductions upon release.” [ 23 ] Felony disenfranchisement policies also violate international law, according to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, which recommends that the United States should adopt appropriate measures to ensure that states restore voting rights to citizens who have fully served their sentences and those who have been released on parole.” [ 24 ] A 2019 Brennan Center report concludes that post-incarceration voting rights restoration builds a stronger democracy, advances civil rights, ends second-class citizenship, aids law enforcement, empowers family and communities, and assures fair and accurate voter rolls.” [ 25 ] Read More Con 1 Because of their vicious crimes, disregard for the law, and frequent arrests, felons should lose their say in the law-making process. If you’re not willing to follow the law yourself, then you shouldn’t have a right in making the law for everyone else…. The common denominator is that we have certain objective minimum qualifications, in terms of responsibility and trustworthiness and...