Ex-Convicts Voting, III

One of my favorite web magazines, Tech Central Station, has a new editorial by Doug Kern arguing that convicted felons should not have the right to vote. Kern argues that advocates of ex-cons voting are living in a "Misdemeanor Nation", where criminal behavior has no consequence, as opposed to a "Felony Nation", where miscreants are punished for their damage to society:

In Misdemeanor Nation, the vote is an inalienable right. You don't need virtue to vote. You don't need to obey the rules of society to vote. If you have a pulse and an eighteenth birthday, you get to vote.

I come from Felony Nation. I come from a place where the right to vote is a presumption that intolerable behavior can rebut.

In Felony Nation, we have these crazy things called "felonies." Here, felonies are crimes that are so severe that they irreversibly corrode the social fabric. Felonies create harm so profound that no jail or prison term can compensate for it.

You can tell that you're in Misdemeanor Nation when you hear glib talk about felons having "paid their debt to society." How does one account for that debt? What is the price of children seeing violence in their home? What is the interest rate on decent people being afraid to walk the streets at night? How does anyone pay back the cost of small business in troubled neighborhoods shutting down because the theft of expensive merchandise has become unbearable?

To be fair, many advocates of giving ex-felons the right to vote take the irrational approach that people are not responsible for their own behavior, and should therefore never be deprived of the right to vote. But as far as I am concerned, this is a red herring. Advocating the re-enfranchisement of ex-cons does not necessarily equal being soft on crime.

What I am saying is that once a person has completed his sentence, his civil rights should be restored. If that person has not been punished enough in the eyes of Mr. Kern, then the prisoner should have been incarcerated longer. If you don't like the idea of murderers and child molestors voting, then give them life sentences. But once a person has paid his debt to society, the he should stop paying.

Kern points out that the movement for re-enfranchisement is often just a cover for a host of other movements:

It's fair to point out that Felony Nation may have gone too far in declaring certain crimes to be felonies. The argument for the enfranchisement of felons often seems to be a proxy fight against mandatory felony sentencing for low-level drug users. It's political poison to suggest that possession of a smidgen of cocaine ought not to be a felony; the enfranchisement of felons is much more palatable. If we're creating too many felons through the drug laws, let's re-examine the drug laws, instead of demeaning the importance of felonies themselves.

Fair point. Certainly there are ulterior motives at work in this movement. As an advocate of both re-enfranchisement and drug legalization, I think that it's best not to mix these two ideas. We can look at the two issues separately. In the same spirit, I ask Mr. Kern that if he feels that criminals are not being sentenced firmly enough, or jails are too comfortable for prisoners, then he tackle those issues head-on, and not use re-enfranchisement as a proxy struggle.