Speaking of election reform, I've recently come to the conclusion that I strongly support the right to vote for convicted felons (apparently some of these restrictions are being loosened across the US, and vary from state to state. Personally I think felons should be allowed to vote even while in prison -- as is current policy in Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Romania, Sweden and Zimbabwe)
One risk of denying felons the right to vote is that a party holding a slim majority can make an action commonly committed by supporters of the other party a "felony", step up law enforcement, and statistically affect voter outcomes in the next election. While the accusation has been made that some drug laws fit into this category, a more compelling example is the case of southern states after the extension of the right to vote to blacks. It is also worth noting that while the two examples I cite are cases where these laws have hurt liberal politics, it is also possible for them to cut the other way. One merely has to find an activity which is statistically correlated with conservative voting patterns and could plausibly be made illegal.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-09-06 12:47 am (UTC)One risk of denying felons the right to vote is that a party holding a slim majority can make an action commonly committed by supporters of the other party a "felony", step up law enforcement, and statistically affect voter outcomes in the next election. While the accusation has been made that some drug laws fit into this category, a more compelling example is the case of southern states after the extension of the right to vote to blacks. It is also worth noting that while the two examples I cite are cases where these laws have hurt liberal politics, it is also possible for them to cut the other way. One merely has to find an activity which is statistically correlated with conservative voting patterns and could plausibly be made illegal.
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_disenfranchisement#Current_Application