Post-retributive felonial disenfranchisement in the United States should be abolished.

Since my opponent has structured his response mostly in dealing with my counterpoints, I shall structure the first part of this concluding round in as brief and concise a way as possible. 1. I apologize to my opponent and the audience, I meant that the graph shows a spike in *the importance* of felon voting, but this is besides the point. The people who made this chart want shock value, to show the "spike" in felon % within the voting population within 25 years would change voting outcome. What is this spike? A measly 1.3%. They purposely scaled it for visual effect. If they put it in a scale of 100%, it would look like a flat line. So typo aside, my opponent refused to address the key issue, which is that these researchers were misleading and lacked statistical integrity. 2. My opponent argues that I, in attacking the credibility of his source, sidestepped his point on crime deterrence. The problem is that this entire study had absolutely nothing to do with crime deterrence. The only mention of recidivism is in the notes section of a random paragraph by one of the authors, stating that there *might* be a correlation between ex-felon voting participation and decreased recidivism. Nothing more than an opinion. The credibility of this source is completely ruined. Since this is the case, a few lines of opinion by the researcher cannot be counted as evidence. 3. In response to the Chin study, my opponent quotes a section from this paper and says that this is an analysis of the Uggen/Manza study and accuses me of not paying attention to the relevant parts of the study. My opponent did not, however, note that the section he quoted was actually from a DIFFERENT study by the same authors, one that is actually from a book these two authors published entitled "Locked Out". My opponent, in first Citing Uggen/Manza 2007, did not specify which study as there were many. It would, of course, be reasonable that I did not cover a study that was completely different from the one my opponent intended, my opponent should have included a link the first time he referenced the study. Regardless, in terms of the actual study, the person writing the paper seems convinced that correlation is causation. Sure, he says that 4.7 per thousand are this, and 5.2 per thousand were that, but what was the sample size? ONE THOUSAND AND TEN. Statistically speaking, these results are completely and totally insignificant. The writer is trying to take a biased and insignificant sample of ONE THOUSAND and apply it to the MILLIONS of ex-felons in the United States. This is, yet again, indicative of a complete lack of statistical integrity. It is akin to flipping heads on a coin and assuming that it will flip heads 4 times in a row afterwards. Sure, there is a chance, but is it a statistically reasonable conclusion? No. Let's now take a look at the paragraph immediately following, which my opponent conveniently left out: "The authors acknowledge that their data are suggestive rather than conclusive, and, as is characteristic of this book, they identify the potential infirmities of the hypothesis", followed by a long list of the study's flaws. This wildly contradicts my opponent's seemingly immovable assertion that voting ex-felons definitely exhibit lower recidivism rates. We can effectively throw out my opponent's argument in this regard. 4. My opponent states that I have not provided a reason why felon voting violates rights. Straw man. My stance is that voting is a privilege, since rights cannot be limited or taken away, but voting can. I have asked three times for my opponent to justify why voting was a natural right, since 17 year olds could not vote. He did not comply. My opponent's assertions that I have not lived up to a burden he shifted from himself onto me, are simply a ruse to avoid answering my own arguments. As I have said, voting restrictions are set by society, for society. If society does not want ex-felons making laws, this is just as valid as the notion that society does not want 12-year old children making laws. This could only be contested on the grounds that voting is a natural right, something my opponent refused to argue three times already. *********** CONCLUSION: Let's wrap up. My opponent, being the proponent, had a hefty burden. He wanted to show that: A. Ex-Felons retain the right to vote by natural law, and there is no reason for the government to limit them. B. Ex-Felons are less likely to undergo recidivism if given the chance to vote For A, I have tried to get my opponent to establish that voting is a natural right, something he has turned down defending THREE times. Instead, he persists in doing nothing but asserting, ad nauseum, that is is, and then strings arguments from that assumption and accuses me of avoiding them. The right to vote is not a natural right. It is a privilege. A natural right is life, liberty, things that cannot be taken away regardless of factors like age, sex, or creed. The right to vote is limited by age, it is not a natural right, my opponent has ignored this point. Furthermore, I have shown that society protects itself from those who want to make laws that will affect everyone. They do not want children making laws, and they do not want ex-felons making laws. This is a decision of society. As for B, I have painstakingly shown that each and every single argument, every source, every statistic my opponent has used, is completely devoid of statistical integrity. All the assumptions about recidivism were done on but 1000 ex felons, of which only 1-2% even showed any monitorable activity. Then, the assumptions are inflated an applied to millions of ex-felons. In fact, even the researchers questioned their validity. My opponent had to audacity to state this complete, bumbling uncertainty as if though it were mathematical fact! As such, my opponent has completely failed to defend his argument, and to uphold his burden. His arguments did not come full circle, his counterclaims begged notions he did not defend, he provided sources that had no credibility or statistical integrity, he has defended no positive claims, and my arguments defending the process by which society is trying to defend the way it is regulated, still stand. I thank my opponent and the audience. This has been a spectacular debate.