Resolved: In the United States, Felons should be allowed to vote upon release from prison.

I will be debating against the topic, "Resolved: In the United States, Felons should not be allowed to vote upon release from prison. " Now, to jump right in. Sorry about that last round; I was a little bit busy, but I would like to provide constructives and rebuttals in this round. I would first like to point out one statistical discrepancy in the proposition"s case. He has stated that 5.9 million people, or 6% of our country"s population cannot vote, but this is clearly an incorrect statistic. According to the most recent statistics from 2014, our country"s population is 318.9 Million. 5.9 million people out of 318.9 Million is just under 2%, not 6%. This brings us to question all of proposition"s evidence and empiric. Now, to get on to constructive assertions. 1: Allowing these felons to vote is not a federal issue and cannot be decided by the U. S. Government or the Supreme Court to encompass the entire United States, as proposition is arguing. According to the Bill of Rights, this issue is decided by the states. Most prominently, the 14th Amendment makes felon voting a state prerogative, not a federal one. If voters choose to change state laws regarding felons and voting, it's their prerogative. Federalism allows for such state-level experimentation, and it's at the state level where the consequences of new felon-voting laws will best be judged. This assertion itself negates proposition"s whole case. Proposition is arguing that we should make a law encompassing the entire United States to allow these released felons to vote. This is not legal, according to the 14th Amendment of our Bill of Rights. 2: The reason we don"t let children vote in the United States is because they have not developed proper judgment and cannot decide which party to vote for. These felons are not allowed to vote for this same reason. If someone has gone to jail for over one year, then they have committed a fairly bad crime such as assault, they have shown that they are not trustworthy and their judgment is not good. I will now strengthen my case with rebuttals. As pointed out earlier, we come to doubt Pro"s evidence because of the discrepancy. Rebuttal to 1a: A change of an election outcome is not enough reason to base changing the law on. If children were allowed to vote, the result of elections would drastically change, but they are not allowed to vote. A change in outcome has nothing to do with the positive or negative values of Felon voting. Many things may cause a change in the outcome of elections. That doesn"t mean they are good. Rebuttal to 1b: In fact, punishment, more often than not, does not end after a prison sentence is over. Parole is a punishment that is given to the majority of felons coming out of prison, which means their punishment is being continued to make sure that they have learned their lesson. Rebuttal to 1c: Pro has provided no solid evidence for this point, just that it "seems to be excessive" to not let these felons vote. But we have these punishments for a reason. Rebuttal to 2a: This point is invalid to this debate, because this debate is about felons, and tampering with crab traps is not a felony, its only major punishment is a fine. A felon is someone who has been convicted to death or one or more years in prison for a crime. Rebuttal to 3: It is not racist that these felon voting laws are not allowing these felons to vote. The laws are the same for all races. If the laws specifically didn"t allow African Americans to vote, then they would be racist. But the fact that minorities can"t vote because of these laws doesn"t prove the laws to be racist, it just proves that these minorities commit more than the average amount of crimes. Rebuttal to 4: This argument about other countries having felon voting as a law is invalid because the fact that other countries have instated these laws doesn"t prove they are good. Pro has provided us with no statistics to show that with these laws, these other countries were benefited, and all he says is that America "would maybe gain more international respect. " First of all, America doesn"t need any more international respect. And second of all, it is not gain respect in the eyes of other countries if we go against our own constitution. I have refuted all of Pro"s points and added two points to this debate.