Liberal and republican arguments against the disenfranchisement of felons

In the United States today, 4.7 million citizens--more than two percent of the adult population--are deprived of the right to vote because they have been convicted of a felony. Of these, 1.7 million have completed their sentences and are no longer under any form of criminal justice supervision. (1) I shall argue that disenfranchisement of offenders who have completed their sentences is morally wrong, and that enfranchising all offenders--even those in prison--would be good social policy. Arguments about felony disenfranchisement are often framed along the lines of classical liberal and classical republican theories of citizenship, and I will follow this practice. The standard classical liberal argument for disenfranchisement of convicted felons is that criminals violate the social contract, and thereby forfeit the political rights to which the contract entitles them. I will argue that social contract theory does not have this implication and that, in fact, social contract theory shows how fundamental the right to vote is and implies that it is wrong to deny the right to vote to felons who have completed their punishment. The standard classical republican argument for disenfranchisement is that convicted felons lack the civic virtue needed for proper exercise of the vote. I will argue that this claim rests on an exaggerated notion of how different criminals are from law-abiding people, and that a concern for civic virtue--of criminals and non-criminals--supports granting voting rights to felons, even those who are still in prison. In section I, "Depriving Felons and Ex-Felons of the Vote in the United States," I sketch the current situation and some of its political implications as well as its historical background. In section II, "Philosophical Arguments for Disenfranchising Felons and Ex-Felons," I consider and critique the liberal (social contract) and republican (civic virtue) arguments for the disenfranchisement of felons and show that they are unpersuasive. In addition, I give reasons for believing that disenfranchisement of felons is not sensible punishment policy. In section III, "Voting and the Social Contract," I argue that the social contract doctrine shows that it is morally wrong to deny the vote to convicted felons who have completed their punishments. In section IV, "Voting and Virtue," I conclude by arguing that it would both exercise and enhance civic virtue to allow convicted felons--even those still in prison--to vote. Section III's argument is a classical liberal argument against disenfranchisement of felons who have served their sentences; section IV's argument is a classical republican argument against disenfranchisement of all felons. (2) I regard these two arguments not as alternatives, but as cumulative in their force. I Depriving Felons and Ex-Felons of the Vote in the United States I shall call those with felony convictions who have completed their sentences and thus supposedly paid their debt to society ex-felons. I shall call those who have been convicted of a felony and not yet completely served their sentences--whether they are in prison or on probation or parole-felons. State disenfranchisement laws vary considerably. "In 48 states and the District of Columbia, all incarcerated persons are ineligible to vote. In addition, 35 states prohibit parolees from voting, 31 states do not allow felony probationers to vote, and in 14 states, a felony conviction can lead to loss of voting rights for life." (3) Alec Ewald comments: "The United States is the only democracy that indefinitely bars so many offenders from voting." (4) Felony disenfranchisement must be viewed in the context of the enormous growth in arrests, convictions, and imprisonment that has taken place in the United States in the last few decades. Between 1980 and 2001, the number of persons incarcerated in state and federal prisons more than quadrupled, growing from 329,000 to nearly 1.4 million. …