Should prisoners have the right to vote?

[Cavegirl]

You appear to be suggesting that if this has not happened already, (and it has not) then it is likely to do so in the near future. What evidence can you give which would support that suggestion? Why are you concerned that politicians might wish to prevent large parts of the population from voting? Are your fears based on any facts?

 

I have never suggested that it was 'likely to happen in the near future' and I'd appreciate it if you don't try to twist what I've actually said. I believe that it is unhealthy for a democracy (at any time) to have a loophole in it which enables politicians to prevent people from voting within it, particularly when they keep records of which way people are likely to vote. I have stated this quite clearly twice now.

 

You suggested that politicians might try to stop political dissidents from voting. The subject of the thread is the inability of prisoners to vote. If you were not implying that politicians are likely to imprison political dissidents, then how are you suggesting that politicians might prevent the dissidents from voting?

 

Again, I never suggested that it was likely or that it had already happened, but I did suggest that it was a possibility under the current system.

 

The United States is not 'a western democracy similar to ours' - It is a Federation of Sovereign States (each of which makes its own laws)

 

I would suggest that the similarity lies in the fact that a party from either country can attain power by generating (or preventing) votes in certain 'swing' areas. This greatly reduces the number of people that would actually need to be prevented from voting in order to assure a result in a certain direction.

 

If you would like to produce evidence (a credible link will do) that "... many democrats had been prevented from voting because they had been falsely accused of having criminal records.' or that 'It was Bush's own brother that was in charge of creating the voting list for Florida' then I - and perhaps others - would be interested to read it.

 

Here is a link to a BBC Newsnight report that described how the event unfolded-

 

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2387698570177187417#

 

It quite clearly shows, based upon documented evidence that tens of thousands of people (mostly black democrats) were prevented from voting because they were accused of serious crimes on the voter role that they had not committed. It also links Jeb Bush directly to this. Seems he didn't need to be too busy, he paid millions to a company to do it all for him. If this is a pack of lies how come the BBC or human rights activists, such as Cynthia McKinney, who brought attention to this were never prosecuted for libel over their claims?

[BettyBooHoo!]

Nope - can't behave, can't vote.

[chem1st]

Suppose we made coffee illegal and locked up all the coffee drinkers and denied them the right to vote.

 

I think giving prisoners the right to vote is a good thing.

 

Some might want rape, murder etc. to be made legal, but there would never be enough of them to democratically push through such a policy. But if you made coffee illegal and they voted for legalising coffee, then the will of the people could be reflected.