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Comment by throwlaplace | Hacker News Reader

btw in florida the voters literally overwhelmingly voted for an amendment that re-enfranchised felons

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Florida_Amendment_4

and republicans are still trying to subvert it by sneaking in restitution as a prerequisite. it was challenged in the courts, overturned, and now appealed

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/27/844297011/voting-rights-for-h...

check out this tweet

https://twitter.com/mrddmia/status/1264687609995026437

Edit: what exactly am I getting downvoted for? Did I post something that wasn't factually correct? Did I use foul language? Did I antagonize?

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You're not explaining the other side of the story.

Many felons are convicted and owe fees to their victims, or to the govt. If you commit a violent crime, or a financial crime, there can be a financial penalty. Many of the felons that want to vote, never paid back their victims, or the state, for the crimes they were committed.

The Florida proposition "restored the voting rights of Floridians with felony convictions after they complete all terms of their sentence including parole or probation"

Now, they want to vote, but still haven't compensated their victims, which was a part of the sentence, based on a lawful conviction.

False. I'm drawing attention to the amendment and what the will of the people was/is and efforts made to subvert that will. The amendment as on the ballot said nothing about requiring money as a prerequisite. That's what Florida voted for: returning freed felons their rights. To ascribe some other interpretation to "terms" is to subvert the will of the people of Florida.

Ultimately the courts will decide whether the legal language "terms" includes fines and restitution. Seeing as these felons are free and fines are a civil matter I don't know how the courts could find that such things are part of their criminal sentence.

Edit: also btw I linked to reputable sources. I didn't obscure anything or omit anything.

It's right there on wiki:

>However, by mid-2019 Republican Governor DeSantis signed a bill into law which originated in the Florida Senate, SB 7066, which required that "people with felony records pay 'all fines and fees' associated with their sentence prior to the restoration of their voting rights"

It's a post facto qualifier. If fines were implied by the initial amendment this bill would be unnecessary.

I still don’t understand why we deny felons the right to vote while they are serving their sentence, so extending this to nonpayment of fines seems even more arbitrary.

In the UK people in jail (so a subset of convicted people) are not allowed to vote. The argument is that while you are detained in jail you are being punished by loss of civil rights and that voting is one of these.

As far as I understand, in Florida even people with past felony convictions can't vote, even if they served their sentence.

People might be interested in this which describes attempts to allow some prisoners in the UK to vote: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-...

One obvious answer is that we've found them to be problematic with regards to living peacefully with other people, so much so that we feel the need to physically remove them so they cannot hurt others. Why would we allow them to vote under those circumstances?

It's analogous to taxation without representation.

Jailed felons are subject to the laws of the land, but have no say in what those laws are. I think that's unjust.

It's especially nefarious when you consider all the people in jail for non-violent offenses.

There's the idea that, felons have opted out of civilized intercourse. You can't do that, then pick and choose which rights you want to keep. After you've deliberately violated rights of others.

In the past, felons were transported. It was cruel and caused unspeakable suffering. Kind of like what the felons did. So a balance of a sort.

I've got the strange feeling that Mars may not be the rich person's paradise folks joke about. It may be a prison colony. The rigors of the trip (permanent physical impairment) may preclude soft rich people from applying for the trip.

Anyway, to return to the topic, if I were officiating a baseball game and somebody came out on the field and broke the bat, pried up the bases and tossed the ball over the fence, I'd evict them from the park. It's only sensible. They can't obey the rules, they're out. Otherwise the game is completely disrupted.

Where is this “idea that felons have opted out of civilized intercourse”? Spaghetti Westerns? North Korea? It certainly isn’t an idea aligned with American values.

Imprisonment is meant for rehabilitation in addition to punishment. There’s the idea, at least in theory, that people who commit crimes can eventually be functional members of society with full rights given a second chance. So we send people to prison and then let them resume their lives as citizens afterwards. If they owe money due to a civil suit they can still vote because why wouldn’t they? Franchise isn’t tied to financial means and shouldn’t be.

> Imprisonment is meant for rehabilitation in addition to punishment.

Don't forget the third big part: stopping them from violating the rights of others.

They do temporarily lose some rights, they do (and should) get them back when their "debt to society" is paid (which I find a slightly weird term, but whatever), why shouldn't the right to vote be one of the rights that you get back when you're rehabilitated and reintroduced into society, just like your right to freely move about?

What the fuck is it with this site and shitty, specious analogies?

Society is not a game or stadium. There is no outside.

Justice is imperfect.

Laws are not all as obvious as 'breaking the bat'.

Now, responding to the part of your comment that isn't the shitty, specious analogy. You beg the question, saying that felons don't get to vote because they've opted out of civilized intercourse. You don't bother to argue the antecedent, you just assume it. That doesn't address the question being asked in the thread, it just affirms the way things are.

> There's the idea that, felons have opted out of civilized intercourse.

Not all felons, though. Only the ones we choose to surveill and prosecute. So coke-sniffing bankers tend never to be caught. But 19 year old poor hispanic kids with weed in their pockets end up in jail on a three strikes violation because the police stop them all the time just for standing on the street.

> if I were officiating a baseball game

Now extend this analogy appropriately: what if the RULES of the baseball game were only written by the winning team? And that team made it so they were allowed to do this stuff without penalty? So they always win.

And the loser team can't fix that. Because to change the rules to make them fair they have to win, and they can't. Because of the rules.

That's how this works in reality: the point to disenfranchising felons isn't to punish them, it's to keep them from voting for the party whose policies might make them less likely to be felons.

Oh dear, that was so beautifully put. Thanks.

What does that have anything to do with whether someone ought to have representation in the very government that created and enforces the laws they were found to have violated?

The state doesn't know how much they owe because they weren't all that concerned before. Also, the Florida DOC has a nasty habit of inventing fines and fees.

According to you it should be simple. Whatever the sentencing judge has put in the sentence is the sentence. But that has proven not to be the case. The governor wants the DOC to find any and all unpaid fines and fees. And they want to be allowed years to resolve it.

The judge looked at the excuses the DOCs counsel was offering and quickly swatted it down. An ex-convict that has satisfied the terms of his sentence as it is written on the sentencing docket has no reason not to have their rights restored.

You haven't actually presented another side to the story, you've just cited a legitimate, but completely irrelevant, concern.

If people aren't paying their debts, garnish their wages, seize their assets, or if they're flagrantly avoiding paying back debts, put them back in jail--you know, normal things that we already do which actually get people to pay back their debts. Failure to pay reparations is a legitimate concern, but it's not relevant to voting rights.

Let's not pretend this is about reparations. It's about disfranchising people.

How dare they make felons pay restitution to victims of violent crimes before voting.

How dare they indeed? It wasn't in the amendment. No one voted for that.

Indeed. Really, felons currently serving their sentence should be able to vote. It's your only protection against the government throwing its political opponents in prison.

If we had a magical, objective, 100% accurate way of determining whether judgments are fair and punishments are appropriate, then maybe it would make sense to suspend the voting rights of criminals. But we don't, and the only check on whether the criminal justice system is doing the right thing is the popular ballot. Allowing the criminal justice system to disenfranchise people is an obvious loophole.

Besides, what are we worried about? That criminals would vote to legalize their own crimes? If more than half the population are criminals, it's not clear that any sort of government is going to work at all....

> It's your only protection against the government throwing its political opponents in prison.

Well, the second amendment may offer some protection as well.

No it does not. The second amendment offers no realistic protection for a civilian in any sort of way.

I have been part of a special forces raid to capture or kill and I can tell you the opponent has no realistic way to win that day. Sure you can win in the long run if you are fighting at home with the enemy fighting far away from theirs but not they you will suffer heavy losses and live in a condition far from what most of us can imagine or are prepared to do.

Suppose a small town in rural US decides to refuse carrying out whatever order or restriction coming down from the federal government. Population ~5,000, they have guns and ammo.

What exactly would you, special forces or the government be able to do, to force them to comply with whatever order it is you are trying to impose?

Seems to me that ensuring small rural towns can disobey federal laws is the wrong thing for which to optimize our society.

I do believe in the self-determination of communities. It's fine to have some sort of government at the federal or supra-national level but it should be restricted and unanimous (i.e. a libertarian, "nightwatchman state").

It doesn't feel right that higher levels can interfere in lower levels in matters that does not affect them. We're seeing this right now in the EU, with various states trying to have their ideas promoted at the level of the EU as a whole, i.e. other nations, which clearly doesn't work because people have different cultures, traditions, etc. That's one of the reasons why Britain left.

Seems to me that's not the question that was asked.

They will quickly learn that their fantasy of rugged individual resistance can be quickly quashed if the government is willing to have civilian casualties. And spoiler, it clearly is, we just saw a guy casually suffocate a guy in broad daylight and there were no consequences until public outcry was so bad they caved and have fired them and started with token charges that will likely not stick based on historical evidence of prior examples.

So... Don't have guns, because the government will kill you anyway? That's encouraging.

Being "encouraging" by ignoring reality isn't particularly useful.

There are plenty of reasons to own firearms which have nothing to do with defending yourself against the government. When seconds count, the police are minutes away.

The blast radius of a modern nuclear warhead is big enough to encompass many cities of population ~5000. Or if obeying international law is a concern, carpet-bombing would be pretty effective.

The idea that people with handheld guns are going to take on a government with nuclear capabilities is an absurd fantasy.

I'm a supporter of the second amendment. There is plenty of justification for supporting the second amendment without entertaining absurd fantasy scenarios.

Arm me with the same arms as my government - nukes, drones, and tanks - and then that's a realistic option.

What would you do with nukes and tanks, or even drones?

You defend your rights with guns, not aircraft carriers.

You defend your rights by being part of a tribe willing to defend you. One person with a gun is useless against more than one person with a gun. And even one on one, the odds aren’t good.

Exactly.

One person with a gun is not useless against more than one person with a gun.

The law conditions votes on fines or fees related to their sentence. There is no system for actually determining what’s owed, so some felons who could vote may not register for fear of committing another crime.

Now that you’re aware of this issue, I’m certain that you agree that conditioning voting on fines and fees related to a sentence is wrong.

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