My home state takes a step in the right direction by reducing the degree to which they disenfranchise felons. Good for them!
That said, there’s still a number of hurdles left. They have to finish probation, for one thing. And frankly, I don’t think it’s legitimate to remove the right to vote in any circumstance. There’s a couple of reasons for that position.
First, if the values of this country are supposed to mean anything then voting should be an absolute guaranteed right. If you want to punish criminals, there’s plenty (too many) of other avenues available. There’s no evidence that limitations on voting serve any kind of deterrent effect, nor is there any evidence that allowing felons the same right to express their political preferences will produce “criminal-friendly” laws or any such nonsense. For one thing, felons will always make up a marginal portion of the population. If the 5% of felons are able to tip a policy into the majority then it clearly has a lot of non-criminal element support. For another, there’s no reason to think that felons are some sort of other species. Most people in prison know full well that their actions were bad. Their individual action doesn’t necessarily translate into political preference.
The second reason is race. Because our criminal justice system is built on a foundation of racism and systemic exclusion, it’s not surprising that a massively disproportionate number of non-voting felons are minorities. The real solution is to fix the criminal justice system, but in the absence of that, at the very least we can prevent the spillover effects of racism from multiplying themselves.
Finally, voting should be thought of as a right, but even more than that, it should be treated as a civic responsibility. After all, it’s pretty obvious that voting doesn’t really make sense if it’s treated as purely a matter of an individual exercising their preference. Virtually nothing is decided by one vote and everyone knows it. The reason why people vote, then, has a lot to do with the very accurate perception that you owe it to everyone else to be involved.
Democracy falls apart if apathy overrides that sense of responsibility. All of which means that it’s particularly insane to take away peoples’ right to vote as if it were a punishment. It’s not just the criminal being punished – it’s every person in the society.
Every citizen who is expected to adhere to laws, and to pay taxes to fund the government who enforces those laws, deserves a say in what laws should exist. To deny voting rights based on commission of a crime is tantamount to declaring that those who fail to support the government may be stripped of their ability to change it. That’s not just wrong, it’s in direct opposition to everything we’re supposed to believe.