Current prisoners should have the right to vote.

I will now defend against my opponent's rebuttals to my round 2 arguments:RE: There are people in prison for crimes that majority think shouldn't be a crime, why should they be denied the right to vote? Ah, I had a feeling that number might have been too high and I should have double-checked it. Still, 40,000 is significant enough. I admit it most likely won't influence the vote on marijuana legalization, but you're still denying people the right to vote based on a law that most believe shouldn't even be a law. Perhaps the solution is actually some middle-ground stance, and we're both wrong in arguing for what we are in this debate: Maybe it should be that violent offenders are denied the right to vote, while non-violent offenders in prison are allowed the right to vote. After all, as I pointed out, most people have a higher opinion of those who are non-violent offenders in prison and believe their punishment should be lightened. I don't expect my opponent to compromise and agree that non-violent offenders in prison should be allowed the right to vote. However, if you were to agree to that, I think the proper thing for voters to do would be to make things a tie between us for this debate. I won't say I'm conceding, but if my opponent agrees to the proposition of allowing non-violent offenders in prison the right to vote, I would concede to that point, but only in that event. I will still offer arguments otherwise for the original stance I agreed to from the beginning: which is that all prisoners should be given the right to vote. Just keep in mind that's an option that I agree to if you feel you might lose the debate and don't want to. I'm fine with us compromising a stance on allowing non-violent offenders the right to vote and violent offenders would have it taken away. In a way, it would make sense because violent offenders should have a worse punishment, they do already, but this would be a means of lightening up the punishment for non-violent offenders. Moving on. .. RE: If 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 law. I want to specifically quote my opponent on this point: "Also, when laws are passed, most citizens who disagree with it would still follow the law until the law is changed or abolished. This is what it means to be a law-abiding citizen. " At the same time, however, there are laws that many people will see as unjust. Civil disobedience is often justified against these laws. Would you, for example, call Rosa Parks a law breaker for doing what she did? In a way, I suppose she was, but I think you could still consider someone a law-abiding citizen even if they break laws that are unjust. I would consider those who only break just laws to not be law-abiding citizens. RE: The right to vote is a very important right, and it would need a compelling reason to take it away from an individual. My opponent didnt' really offer a compelling reason why the right to vote, specifically, should be taken away from the person here though. They did talk about how some rights in general will be taken away, but I don't believe this suffices for why specifically the right to vote. RE: There can be people in prison innocent of the crime, should they have their right to vote taken away? Yes, I believe this comes down to subjective opinion, nonetheless I can still offer reasons why it would make sense to allow prisoners to vote due to this problem I pointed out. Is it not punishment enough to be taken away from your family, to potentially have to go through fights with inmates, to no longer be able to improve you lot in life, and no longer able to do what you enjoy? I consider each of those things to be major punishments, why do we need to add taking away the right to vote to all of that? You do say that a couple million people could have impacts on elections. However, I argue they would only have an impact on an election that is very close, within 2 million votes of one another. Not to mention, I don't think the voting rate for prisoners is 100%. It's not even 100% for the general population. I would guess it would be half as much, so maybe 1 million prisoners would vote. For the policies that would release the prisoners, there are far more law-abiding citizens who outnumber the prisoners, and I don't think they would be able to vote their way out of prison, so to speak. They may have influence over other policies, but is that such a big problem? I think the chance of having potentially a candidate chosen because of the prison vote, is therefore, ok so that we can have the innocent people in prison vote if they so chose. It just doesn't seem to be a big enough impact problem to allow prisoners to vote in my opinion. Again, 1 million people can't beat the tens of millions of law-abiding citizens. They can't just vote their way out of prison. ConclusionI believe, as I mentioned, since there are people in prison for laws that most people think shouldn't even be a law, and that there are innocent people in prison, additionally since crime is partially a subjective idea, as my opponent also conceded, that this means there is not sufficient reason to deny the right to vote to prisoners.