Current prisoners should have the right to vote.

I will follow a structure that basically is this: Main points will be bolded, and supporting information will be beneath them, not in bold. Later once my opponent has offered main arguments, a summarization of what they said will be bolded and a rebuttal offered underneath. If what I want to rebut from my opponent is short, I will directly quote them and italicize it to indicate it is a quote from my opponent and then offer rebuttal underneath that. Now, let us begin:There are people in prison for crimes that majority think shouldn't be a crime, why should they be denied the right to vote?57% of Americans currently think we should legalize marijuana[1] yet there are currently 2.2 million people in prison for marijuana possession[2]. These people are not allowed to vote under all state laws while they are serving their sentence[3]. These people can be a driving force too to help lead to the legalization of marijuana. Because the majority that support marijuana legalization is such a small majority, every vote matters, and the fact that people who are likely in favor of marijuana legalization(I imagine close to 100% of convicted marjuana users think marijuana should be legalized) this is reducing the amount of people who would vote on such a law, and basically helps keep the law criminalizing marijuana longer than it should be there for. This leads nicely into my next pointIf society is the one who decides the laws, certain laws may never be removed because you're removing the suffrage of people who would want to get rid of that lawLet's suppose, again, you have a small majority of people(somewhere between 51-59%) who believe a certain law should be removed. Due to that people are imprisoned for breaking that law, it removes people who are supportive of getting rid of that law, and potentially makes it near imossible to remove that law. Eventually, you could even have majority of people, or maybe just a large number of people, imprisoned for breaking a law that most people think shouldn't exist. Prisoners, in my opinion, are still part of our society, and they should have a say in what laws our society have, otherwise you run into situations like I described where the people who support removing a law are imprisoned and can no longer vote to remove that law. I do see a potenital rebuttal to this, such as someone asking "why should convicted murderers be allowed to vote? This could potentially lead to legalizing murder" Well, I think the number of people who think murder should be illegal will always outnumber the people who think it should be legal. So, why not allow them to vote? Does it harm anything in the long run? Has there ever been a society who believed murder is okay under all circumstances? I don't think so. Some societies would legalize murder in specific circumstances, but if they do, that's their decision. And again, if a majority of people want to legalize murder in a specific circumstance, shouldn't that be their choice? Murder might be considered wrong to us, but morals essentially come from society in some shape or form. The argument that morals come from a god is not entirely accurate in my opinion, but let's just assume it is. What if that society's god decides it's okay to murder in a certain circumstance? Every religion has a different god, and thus a different set of morals. Even if you think morality comes from a god, what makes the god you get morals from superior to the one that others get their morals from? Thus, Morality, even if it comes from a god is subjective because there are a number of gods. It's subjective opinion that the morals of one god is superior to another. And if you believe morality comes from society, that makes it subjective as well, since what makes one society's morals superior to another's? Thus, since morality is basically subjective, prisoners should be allowed to vote in order to express their subjective opinion on the matter. Why is one person's set of morals superior to another's? What makes a non-prisoner's set of morals superior to a prisoner's set of morals? To indicate a prisoner shouldn't be allowed to vote, you're indicating they don't get to voice their opinion or influence society's opinion on a moral subject. Why? The right to vote is a very important right, and it would need a compelling reason to take it away from an individualI don't believe marijuana usage is sufficient reason to take someone's right to vote away. Do you? Now, maybe you believe murder is a valid reason to take their right to vote away, but as I discussed above, it would all be based off of subjectivity, and subjectivity is not reason enough to take a person's right to vote away. There can be people in prison innocent of the crime, should they have their right to vote taken away?I think anyone would agree if someone is actually innocent of a crime, they should have no rights taken away. Because our justice system is imperfect though, we will have people who are innocent of a crime. This study estimates that about 10,000 innocent people are convicted every year[4]. That's 10,000 people every year who wrongfully get their right to vote taken away. Does preventing more people from being allowed to vote, who actually committed their crime, justify taking away the right to vote for innocent people? I argue it does not. Even if there is one innocent person who has their right to vote taken away for ever 1,000,000 people who actually committed the crime, I don't think it justifies taking the right to vote away from prisoners. Sources:[1] http://www.pewresearch.org... [2] http://www.drugpolicy.org... [3] http://www.ncsl.org... [4] https://researchnews.osu.edu...