During a recent discussion about the long-term implications of sexual-predator laws, the conversation was hijacked by a friend of mine who was interested in the issue of felon disenfranchisement. Such provisions frequently provide that convicted felons are barred forever from participating in the electoral process. My friend wondered if ex-convicts who had served their time and had paid their debt to society should have their voting rights reinstated. In fact, he openly wondered whether such laws essentially constituted a form of racial discrimination. He asked whether I thought the the US should follow the lead of many other nations in dismantling this form of voting-rights apartheid.
When the subject of felons and voting rights arises, some activists suggest that felon-disenfranchisement laws got their start in the post-Civil War Reconstruction period and were designed as a form of racial discrimination. Consequently, the theory goes, it is the only form of voting-related discrimination still permitted; literacy tests, poll taxes, and Jim Crow laws have been abolished, but stripping felons (the majority of whom are minorities, including a sizeable number of African-Americans) of their voting rights remains. As Susan Marquardt noted in "Deprivation of a Felon's Right to Vote: Constitutional Concerns, Policy Issues and Suggested Reform for Felony Disenfranchisement Law," 82 U. Det. Marcy L. Rev. 279 (Winter 2005), each year some four million Americans are not permitted to vote in elections as a result of felony disenfranchisement. Felons lose their voting rights automatically upon conviction in 48 states (this would include, for example, both Winona Ryder and Martha Stewart), although only in 13 states do they lose their voting rights permanently (in the others, they lose their voting rights during incarceration and/or during parole as well). Many former felons, however, reside in states which feature permanent voting restrictions; some 500,000 felons, for example, are affected by Florida's permanent disenfranchisement provision.
While felon disenfranchisement and the post-Reconstruction South do have deep (and often overlooked) ties to one another, the history of felon disenfranchisement is a fascinating one. I want to start with a brief historical overview before plunging into the modern-day debate. Far from emerging suddenly in the wake of the Civil War, the concept actually stretches back into antiquity. Felony disenfranchisement laws originated in the politics of the early democracies of Greece and Rome, where criminals were stripped of a number of rights, including the right to participate in the assembly (one must remember that in the democracy of Athens, for example, all eligible citizens voted on measures, rather than "through" elected representatives; this "pure" form of democracy also tended at times to manifest itself as the tyranny of the majority, which could often be cruel, capricious, and arbitrary).
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Article comments
1 - BIll Wallo
No bleeding, just logic. Which I sense you are unfamiliar with. :)
2 - Andy Fletcher
An offender who has completed his sentencing has paid his debt to society and is due total reinstatement of all rights. If this does not define a payment of debt, then every citizen regardless of state is deserving of a definition.
Technically, if all rights are not restored, his state is that of a non citizen since the constitution defines the citizen and his rights. So on a second arrest, or, in his everyday dealing with a foreign society which he finds himself now resident, he should be given diplomatic status and given complete accord has a foreigner.
There are no legally defined constitutional classes of citizens, therefore we find ourselves with a definition for a class that has less of the full complement of rights.
Definitions such has recividism make no sense, since he is in exile of state after the first offense. Technically the second time around an alien has now committed a crime.
Unless our intent is to disown citizens, it behooves society to bring him back into the fold, lest we end up a nation of home guards of non citizens guarding our loved ones while we enjoy giving our lives at the front lines for our total complement of inalienable rights.
Closure must always be a foreseeable end, since God defines man has social beings. It is to this end that should guide our actions.