In late April, the Democratic governor of my home state, Virginia, restored the voting rights of felons, provided they had completed their term of imprisonment, parole and probation. Similar laws apply in 38 states and the District of Columbia, while most of the remaining states have a lifetime ban on voting for convicted felons.
There was a fair amount of outrage about the gubernatorial order, from conservative writers and pundits as well as Virginia legislators. Some are especially angry about the fact that the order would allow ex-felons to run for public office. Others are pretty sure McAuliffe is just pulling for Hillary in November and wants to hand her more voters. Still others just object to it because "not committing felonies" seems like a fairly low bar to keep your right to vote.
I object to the law as well, but for different reasons. In my opinion, it doesn’t go far enough. Virginia, as well as states such as South Carolina, which has a similar law to the one enacted by Gov. McAuliffe, need to open their voting rights laws to be more like those of Vermont and Maine, who allow felons to vote by absentee ballot from prison.
To answer the concerns of people who are upset by the idea that felons could run for elected office: While there are certainly prisoners who will never be truly reformed and remorseful, that’s by no means a description of every person who has ever been to prison. Your past time in jail, or lack thereof, might not ultimately determine your character — politicians with clean records might turn out to be criminally unethical, and former prisoners can turn out to be powerful activists and truly admirable people who might be well-suited for political office.
Which is not to mention, of course, that most felony convictions, particularly violent felony convictions, are probably enough all by themselves to keep people out of elected office, regardless of their personal worthiness for the job or the presence of any laws against them running. If Donald Trump had actually shot someone instead of just joking about it, he might not lose his most rabid core followers, but I doubt he'd win a majority in November even if he suddenly became reasonable, because the whole murder thing would be all we'd hear about for the next four months.
For those saying this is a deliberate boost to the Clinton campaign, consider that whether or not that was McAuliffe’s intention, it’s actually difficult to say that most of those felons who can vote again would actually vote for Hillary.
Although some studies have indeed found that more felons are Democrats than Republicans, other studies have found that they mostly have no party affiliation. And there has never been a nationwide survey. It’s also worthwhile to note that if there are higher percentages of Democrats in the prison population, that might simply be due to the disproportionate number of people of color in prison. And because people of color tend to lean more to the left than the right, it would make sense, in a group that is 60 percent people of color, to find more people who are Democrats than Republicans. It is not reasonable to assume that Democrats are more likely to be criminals, or vice versa.
And, as McAuliffe pointed out when questioned about it, the GOP has an opportunity to win those votes as well. They are not earmarked for the Democrats simply because the people who cast them are prisoners.
But even assuming that it is an unshakable Democratic advantage, which, as we have established, is simply not something we can say with certainty, thinking that votes aren't going to go to you is an indefensible reason to keep them out. Regardless of whether you like or agree with someone, keeping them from voicing an opinion altogether is a poor way to deal with that, and it is deeply ironic coming from a party that often claims that its opponent is anti-First-Amendment because is has succumbed to the pressures of political correctness.
As for the idea that if people want to keep their voting rights, they should just keep their noses clean, it may not always be that easy. Over-criminalization, profiling, the desperation of poverty and a legal system that does not allow for much judicial discretion makes some people more likely than others to be convicted of felonies. It is hard to argue that our justice system does not often favor white people and the mentally stable. "Three Strikes" laws and mandatory minimums might result in prisoners being locked up for felonies for relatively minor offenses or serving unreasonable sentences.
Should people who have been guilty of fairly minor drug offenses, some of whom have been sucked into a cycle of addiction because of a mental illness, be stripped of their voting rights? Why are we legislating who deserves the right to be politically active based on a measure that can be arbitrary and discriminatory?
It is important to remember that even the most violent murderers locked up in our jails are American citizens. It's easy not to feel sympathy for them, and it's certainly easy to forget that they should have these rights in particular when so many of their other rights are taken from them in prison. But the freedom to cast a ballot is not like the other freedoms that felons lose in prison — taking them away serves no safety purpose for the rest of society.
Another thing to think about is the fact that felons in jail live in an environment entirely controlled by a government they did not and cannot vote for. They have no say in the conditions they will live in or how they can be treated. They are essentially at the will of the general public, who cannot possibly understand the issues that affect their lives, and have to rely on, essentially, the intellectual charity of people who may be disinclined to care about their problems.
That is not what we should stand for, as a country. One of the most fundamental tenants of democracy is that your vote counts as much as the president's vote. So the fact that there are large groups of people, largely composed of minorities, who are being prevented from participating in this process should disturb us.
There are rights that are reasonable to take away from people who are incarcerated, but their ability to tell us who they want to govern them is not one of them. They are people, affected by laws and governance, and regardless of what they may or may not have done, they deserve a voice.