In a Democratic Society, Felons Ought to Retain the Right to Vote

Because I support the VALUES set forth in the Preamble to the United States Constitution, the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, I affirm. The CRITERA I advocate for your ultimately deciding this debate are: (1) OBJECTIVITY: This debate should not be decided on the basis of preexisting personal opinions, bias, or prejudice. (2) LOGIC: This debate should not be decided on the basis undisciplined emotionalism. (3) TANGIBLE, EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE: This debate should be decided upon documented facts, not upon abstract, unverifiable, hypotheses. MY RESOLUTIONAL ANALYSIS AND FRAMEWORK: (A) The United States of America is a democratic society; indeed, it is the most prominent democratic society in the world today. (B) Of all the democratic societies in the world today (and I believe that there are 119 countries which identify themselves as such), the United States stands almost alone in automatically disenfanchising (revoking the right to vote of) felons. The consensus of experts in the fields of law, criminology, and political science is that - today - appromiately 2.5% of the American adult population (5-6 million people) in this country is denied the right to vote because of "felon" and/or "ex-felon" status. CONTENTION ONE: The American policy of revoking the right to vote felons (which I will now consistently refer to as "felon disenfranchisement") is illogical and haphazard. There are many reasons for this: A. Many of the people who commit felonies are never arrested, so they are never identified as "felons." Either the crimes go unreported, or the investigations fail to locate a suspect. (For example, remember the "anthrax killings" which occurred after 9/11.) B. Many of the people who are arrested for committing felonies are not prosecuted. The charges them are dropped - or reduced to misdemeanors - for a variety of reasons, most of which have nothing whatsoever to do with the suspect's guilt or innocence (i.e., prosecutorial discretion (including the prosecutor's political agenda), court-clog, and/or jail-prison overcrowding). C. Many of the people who are arrested for committing felonies, and who are prosecuted, "plea-bargain" down to a misdemeanor, and therefore retain the right to vote. D. Many of the people in this country who are convicted of felonies (the expert estimates range from .5% to 14%) are actually INNOCENT! E. Even if our criminal justice system were perfect (which it certainly isn't), there is no logical reason to believe that felons - as a group - would be "worse voters" than untreated alcoholics, untreated drug addicts, psychotics (treated or untreated), the homeless, illiterates, morons, grade-school dropouts, moral perverts, petty criminals (as noted before, unlike "felons," people who commit "misdemeanors" retain the right to vote), and/or lawyers... and yet only felons are the only adult citizens singled out under American law for disenfranchisement. Indeed, a good case can be made for theory that the only real justification for felon disenfranchisement in America is ulterior desire to perpetuate racism and/or material elitism. CONTENTION TWO: The American policy of felon disenfranchisement actually HARMS the American democratic society. I assert this for two independent reasons: A. Felony disenfranchisement increases crime. (If you prefer debatespeak and/or legalese, "felony disenfranchisement encourages criminal recidivism.") Disenfranchisement (which, by the way, has historically be referred to as "civil death"), by definition and design, alienates the felon from society, severely damages the felon's chances for rehabilitation, and gives the felon a greater incentive to commit even more crime when he or she is ultimately released from prison (assuming he or she is sent to prison in the first place - many felons are not - instead, they are placed on "probation"). Empirical studies - including some conducted right here in the good old USA - demonstrate that in those jurisdictions in which felons retain the right to vote, they are 50% less likely to commit another crime than in jurisdictions which deny felons the right to vote. B. Felony disenfranchisement laws backfire - they disenfranchise non-felons. (If you prefer debatespeak or legalese, "felon disenfranchisement is counterproductive.") In our democratic society, the right to vote is regulated, in large part, by State governments. Each of America's 50 states has it own laws concerning felony disenfranchisement. Two - Maine and Vermont - have no restrictions whatsoever on the voting rights of felons - the position supported by the resolution; Two other States - Kentucky and Virginia - have automatic lifetime felon disenfranchisement. The remaining 46 States - and the District of Columbia - have created a veritable Rubik's Cube of rules, regulations and requirements which almost no one - expect perhaps a full-time election law attorney - can decipher. As a result, the mere existence of felony disenfrachisement creates three inherent problems for non-felons who wish to exercise their right to vote. All of the following three problems have been empirically verified in the American elections that took place in 2004 and 2006, and the evidence also empirically demonstrates that they are occurring in 2008: A. VOTER CAGING: Lists of the names of convicted felons are cynically manipulated by partisans of one party or another to attack innocent voters - and literally hundreds of thousands of innocent voters are "purged" from voter registration lists, or are "challenged" at the polls on election day, or both. This is known as "voter caging," and it's anti-democratic to the max. (For example, my name is Michael Miller. I have never committed a felony, but they are -at least - hundreds of people named "Michael Miller" who have committed a felony. Because of this, I may be challenged at the polls any time I try to vote, and it is quite possible that someday I will be denied the right to vote.) B. INNOCENT MISTAKES: Even well-meaning election officials are confused by the American maze of felon disenfranchisement laws. As a result, they often make mistakes and refuse to allow bona fide citizens to register to vote. In some States (i.e., South Carolina), mistaken interpretation of voter eligibility laws - by completely honest election officials - runs as high as 61%! C. SELF-DISENFRANCHISEMENT: Most Americans are not constitutional lawyers, nor are they experts in the field of election law. Thousands of honest, law-abiding Americans mistakenly believe that because they were arrested at some point in their lives, they have lost the right to vote, even though the charges against them were dropped, or they were found not guilty at trial. Thousands of others - who have very minor "criminal histories" - mistakenly believe that convictions for minor infractions, juvenile offenses, and/or misdemeanors disqualify them from voting. CONCLUSION: Like the disaster known as "Prohibition" in the America of the 1920's and early 1930's, felon disenfrachisement is a classic example of an arguably-noble theory that just doesn't work in the "real world" of American democracy. In addition, in the "real world" of American politics and elections, the policy of felon disenfranchisement - no matter how scrupulously it is applied - causes much more harm than to our society than it prevents. I support felon enfranchisement - not because it's the right thing to do for felons - but because it's right thing to do for YOU - and all the rest of America's democratic society.