The PRO and CON statements below give a five minute introduction to the debate on felon disenfranchisement. (Read more information about our one star to five star Theoretical Expertise System.)
PRO: "We let ex-convicts marry, reproduce, buy beer, own property and drive. They don't lose their freedom of religion, their right against self-incrimination or their right not to have soldiers quartered in their homes in time of war. But in many places, the assumption is that they can't be trusted to help choose our leaders... If we thought criminals could never be reformed, we wouldn't let them out of prison in the first place."
Steve Chapman Columnist and Editorial Writer at the Chicago Tribune "Too Many Ex-Convicts Aren't Able to Vote," StarTribune of Minneapolis-St. Paul Aug. 15, 2006
CON: "Now why would we, as citizens, as non-felon citizens, want felons helping to pick our representatives.
If you're a convicted felon, convicted of a violent crime, you have bad judgment. Why do we want people with that judgment picking our representatives?"
Tucker Carlson MSNBC News Commentator The Situation with Tucker Carlson June 26, 2006
2. Crime Deterrence of Felon Disenfranchisement
PRO: "Other than serving a retributive function, disenfranchisement certainly does not meet the goals of incapacitation or deterrence. Individuals who are not already deterred from crime by the threat of incarceration are unlikely to be swayed by the prospect of losing their right to vote."
Marc Mauer, MSW Executive Director of The Sentencing Project "Felony Disenfranchisement: A Policy Whose Time Has Passed?," Human Rights Winter 2004
CON: "Barring felons from voting is one way society sends the message that committing a serious crime has serious consequences."
Roger Clegg, JD President and General Counsel, Center for Equal Opportunity "Felon Disenfranchisement Is Constitutional, and Justified," National Constitution Center website May 7, 2007
3. Racism and Felon Disenfranchisement
PRO: "The foundation of disenfranchisement was laid long before the Reconstruction era and continues to support a structure of African-American disenfranchisement that is more expansive, and impacts not only the individual African-American male ex-felon but also the African-American community as a whole...
Legally, African-Americans have achieved the status of citizen. Practically, African-Americans have to continue to fight obstacles set up to deny their citizenship. Historically, in a number of United States' jurisdictions, African-Americans have had to challenge poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, whites-only primaries, and felon disenfranchisement laws, all designed to prohibit them from voting and thus negate their citizenship. All of the other forms of disenfranchisement have fallen by the wayside, save one — felon disenfranchisement laws."
S. David Mitchell, JD Scholar in Residence at the Deptment of Sociology at the University of Colorado "The New Invisible Man: Felon Disenfranchisement Laws Harm Communities," Bad Subjects magazine Dec. 2004
CON: "The frequently heard charge is that disenfranchising felons is racist because the felon population is disproportionately black. But the mere fact that blacks make up a lopsided percentage of the nation's prison population doesn't prove that racism is to blame.
Is the mostly male population of the prisons evidence of reverse sexism? Of course not: men commit the vast majority of serious crimes - a fact no one would dispute - and that's why there are lots more of them than women behind bars.
Regrettably, blacks also commit a disproportionate number of felonies, as victim surveys show. In any case, a felon either deserves his punishment or not, whatever his race. If he does, it may also be that he deserves disenfranchisement. His race, in both cases, is irrelevant."
Edward Feser, PhD Instructor at Pasadena City College "Should Felons Vote?," City Journal Spring 2005
4. Congressional Authority Over Voting
PRO : "There are three potential constitutional bases for Congress's authority to enfranchise non-incarcerated offenders for federal elections :
- Congress's supervisory power over federal elections, rooted in Article 1, Sec. 4;
- Congress's enforcement power under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment, and
- Congress's enforcement power under Section Two of the Fifteenth Amendment."
Gillian E. Metzger, JD Professor of Law at Columbia University Law School Memorandum to the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on the Constitution, Oct. 20, 1999
CON: "In the United States most attacks on felon disenfranchisement through constitutional litigation have failed....
I conclude that in light of the Supreme Court's new federalism jurisprudence it is uncertain whether the Supreme Court would uphold such a [felon enfranchisement] law as a permissible exercise of congressional power, leaving state legislatures as the prime locus for changes to felon disenfranchisement laws."
Richard L. Hasen, JD, PhD William H. Hannon Distinguished Professor of Law Chair at Loyola Law School "The Uncertain Congressional Power to Ban State Felon Disenfranchisement Laws," Social Science Research Network, Nov. 2005
5. Newspaper Editorial Positions
PRO : "There is no good reason to deny these Americans (felons) the vote... It diminishes American democracy to not allow people who have paid their debt to society to help select their leaders."
New York Times "Restoring the Right to Vote," Jan. 10, 2006
CON: "Felon voting is still a state issue, and for most of the country, its time still hasn't come... serious lawbreakers should not help elect the country's lawmakers."
PRO: "The Eighth Amendment 'succinctly prohibits 'excessive' sanctions,' and demands that 'punishment for crime should be graduated and proportioned to the offense'... Thus, the states that continue to exclude all felons permanently are outliers, both within the United States and in the world."
Pamela S. Karlan, JD Professor of Public Interest Law at Stanford University "Convictions and Doubts: Retribution, Representation, and the Debate over Felon Disenfranchisement," Stanford Law Review, Vol. 56, No. 5, 2004
CON: "Unlike any other voting qualification, felon disenfranchisement laws are explicitly endorsed by the text of the Fourteenth Amendment.... They are presumptively constitutional. Only a narrow subset of them - those enacted with an invidious, racially discriminatory purpose - is unconstitutional."
Alex Kozinski, JD Circuit Judge, U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Dissent(97 KB) in Farrakhan v. State of Washington Feb. 24, 2006
8. U.S. Voting Rights Act (VRA)
PRO: "It is plain to anyone reading the Voting Rights Act that it applies to all 'voting qualification[s].' And it is equally plain that [New York Election Law] § 5-106 [which denies the vote to incarcerated felons and felons on parole] disqualifies a group of people from voting. These two propositions should constitute the entirety of our analysis. Section 2 of the Act by its unambiguous terms subjects felony disenfranchisement and all other voting qualifications to its coverage.
The duty of a judge is to follow the law, not to question its plain terms. I do not believe that Congress wishes us to disregard the plain language of any statute or to invent exceptions to the statutes it has created. The majority’s 'wealth of persuasive evidence' that Congress intended felony disenfranchisement laws to be immune from scrutiny... includes not a single legislator actually saying so. But even if Congress had doubts about the wisdom of subjecting felony disenfranchisement laws to the results test of § 2, I trust that Congress would prefer to make any needed changes itself, rather than have courts do so for it.
I respectfully dissent."
Sonia Sotomayor, JD Supreme Court Justice and former Circuit Judge of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals Dissent in Hayden v. Pataki(404 KB) May 4, 2006
CON: "The Court of Appeals (José A. Cabranes, Circuit Judge) concludes that the Voting Rights Act must be construed to not encompass prisoner disenfranchisement provisions such as that of New York because (a) Congress did not intend the Voting Rights Act to cover such provisions and (b) Congress made no clear statement indicating an intent to modify the federal balance by applying the Voting Rights Act to these provisions...
[T]here are persuasive reasons to believe that Congress did not intend to include felon disenfranchisement provisions within the coverage of the Voting Rights Act, and we must therefore look beyond the plain text of the statute in construing the reach of its provisions...
We therefore conclude that [The Voting Rights Act] was not intended to - and thus does not - encompass felon disenfranchisement provisions."
Hayden v. Pataki (404 KB) United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit May 4, 2006
9. Automatic Restoration of the Vote
PRO: "[L]ike any debt, once the citizen has fully repaid, he or she should be afforded the opportunity, except where the most heinous of crimes have been committed, to [automatically] re-enter society with the same rights the citizen had before breaking the law."
Charlie Crist, JD Governor of Florida "Wednesday My View: Florida Must Begin Automatic Restoration of Ex-Offender Rights," Tallahassee.com Apr. 3, 2007
CON: "The proposal to automatically restore civil rights when leaving prison would restore rights without providing a reasonable period of time to determine if felons are truly rehabilitated or still leading a life of crime."
Bill McCollum, JD Attorney General of Florida "McCollum: Be Responsible About Felons' Rights," Orlando Sentinel Apr. 1, 2007
10. Payment of Fees as Condition for Voting
PRO: "I don't think having the right to vote should be based upon one's financial status. It smacks too much of class and other forms of bias."
Jeanne Kohl-Welles, PhD Washington State Senator (D-36th) "Bill Would Give Felons Voting Rights on Release," Spokesman Review Feb. 14, 2007
CON: "We believe a rational basis does exist for the Legislature to deny felons the right to vote until they have completed their entire court-ordered sentences, including payment of criminal penalties, victim's restitution, and legal fees, rather than separating out various sentencing aspects."
Rob McKenna, JD Attorney General of the State of Washington Sam Reed Washington Secretary of State "State to Appeal Ruling Granting Voting Rights to Felons Who Owe Fines," Seattle Times Mar. 29, 2006
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