Let the Incarcerated Vote | Hacker News Reader

Let the Incarcerated Vote

theatlantic.com

I’m in the UK where we also don’t allow prisoners to vote, but I’ve always said they should have it for a simple reason - with the way it is, there’s an incentive for any given government to imprison the political opposition. Even if it’s not used, it’s there.

Edit: downvoted already, interesting. I lean centre-right on most things

That's a weak argument.

1) You'd have to imprison millions of people to make a difference in most elections.

2) If you actually have the power to imprison so many people without consequences, you don't need to do it for the election's sake. Just fake the election results. Works for Putin, Lukashenko, and other dictators. Gulags are a pain to manage, especially in the modern world where information spreads like wildfire.

I should have articulated it better - i don’t mean literally rounding people up to sway an election. I think it might be something that happens gradually over time with a softer, more subtle effect than that. Say, tougher enforcement in some areas than others.

And how about what’s made illegal in the first place? Could there be an incentive to pass laws that criminalize activity that the other side is more likely to engage in? (See: the war on drugs)

It’s probably naive to think that there are no political consequences at all.

The US has millions of people incarcerated and a few million more who can't vote because they were formerly incarcerated.

The US has millions of people incarcerated for crimes, not political dissidents.

A substantial majority have not been convicted of a crime and there is of course certain groups that tend to be incarcerated at higher rates.

We're not talking about jailing dissidents though, we're talking about jailing demographics that tend to vote for the opposition.

You don't need to be a dissident to be politically disfavored. "Sarah Shannon and colleagues estimate that one-third of black men had a felony conviction in 2010—a significant increase over the past 30 years and far above the rate for white men." [0]

As one Watergate conspirator revealed in an interview, this was the purpose of the war on drugs: "by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities." [1]

[0] https://www.sentencingproject.org/news/5593/

[1] https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/

This isn't 100% true. Prisoners serving sentences of less than a year can vote in Scotland

Sidenote: for those who think it's strange to use the word 'bodies' instead of 'people' (includes me): apparently this originates out of something called Critical Race Theory. An explanation of the term can be found here: https://newdiscourses.com/tftw-bodies/.

Too often I see use of phrases like “black bodies” as perpetuating the dehumanization the speaker is arguing against. They should speak of the people as they see them not as the system that oppresses them sees them.

I think this article is different, the context is counting, where there is no humanity to strip away, so “bodies of incarcerated people” may be unexpected phrasing but accurate and without counterproductive effect.

To me it sounds demeaning to speak of people like 'bodies'. For example in my native language (Dutch), it would create associations with dead people. Wouldn't it be the same in American English?

I support letting prisoners vote, absolutely. But one thing we should watch out for, is that prison gangs could have a lot of influence over those votes. We’d need to make sure there’s no way to know who another inmate voted for.

Not my problem, but I'm torn on my opinion. On the one hand, seems like an interesting idea. On the other, the US is known as being too quick to incarcerate people. Rather than spend energy arguing about letting incarcerated people vote, it seems more useful to make sure that nobody is being locked up for victimless crimes and taking a harder look at why anyone is being locked up for non-violent crimes.

It seems potentially reasonable that violent criminals should be disenfranchised. Some people should not have a voice in society - like raping murderers.

To flip it around: Allowing incarcerated people to vote removes any political incentive to convict supporters of political opponents. This would allow reforms about incarceration to be less politically divisive, and more focused on what's good for society.

I would go further, and say that their voices should be represented, as they as likely people who society has failed, before they failed society.

I support making voting a right to all citizens, removing any games around preventing others to vote, and ensuring everyone has a voice. Yes, even the worst of the worst, as the harm in letting them have their meager affect on the voting results is far less than those caused politicians choosing who their electorate is.

The removal of the right to vote is part of the systematic disenfranchisement of Black people in the US. Many states still have laws permanently removing the right to vote from people with felony convictions.

Recent shenanigans in Florida pretty clearly lay out what's at stake here. Enough people are put through the criminal justice system that they would be a significant voting block... if they have the right to vote. And since they can't vote, politicians have literally no interest in ensuring that prisons are handled humanely.

It's also worth considering that many violent offenders get put away when they're basically still kids, and become totally different people as adults. The mythical Charles Manson interest group is vanishingly small, and easily outweighed by basically every other voter.

Finally, the restoration of voting rights for felons was delivered by a ballot initiative led by formerly incarcerated people. They most definitely did not consider it a waste of energy! The Planet Money podcast just had an excellent episode on the issue, with interviews with a couple of the people who made it happen: https://www.npr.org/2020/10/26/927846676/who-gets-to-vote-in...

> Rather than spend energy arguing about letting incarcerated people vote, it seems more useful to make sure that nobody is being locked up for victimless crimes and taking a harder look at why anyone is being locked up for non-violent crimes.

They are orthogonal problems. Solving one doesn't solve the other.

And disenfranchisement is creating problems as shown in the article, while it tries to solve a problem, which is practically non-existent thanks to representative democracy.

First off, trying to delineate between who is allowed to vote and who except on most general rules (e.g. citizens over X years) is more likely than not to be used and abused to shape the electorate. The details are well documented, as in the article.

On the other hand, what does excluding criminals trying to solve? You don't want them to decide what will happen in the country, but that is why there is a representative democracy. They are only allowed to vote for one of their "betters", which will take the decisions. (The classism was to my knowledge partly intentional in design). And their numbers are low enough, that they won't be able to chose a representation, which overrules the non-incarcerated

> Some people should not have a voice in society - like raping murderers.

But people running a business making millions addicted to opioids? It is not complicated to condemn criminals, but it is complicated to set up a system, which doesn't use that wish for retribution to distort the electorate. And to what end? What objective problem does it solve?

> > Rather than spend energy arguing about letting incarcerated people vote, it seems more useful to make sure that nobody is being locked up for victimless crimes and taking a harder look at why anyone is being locked up for non-violent crimes.

> They are orthogonal problems. Solving one doesn't solve the other.

I disagree. If incarcerating people weren't an effective method of both denying people you don't like a vote and stealing their voting power for the people in your state that you aren't excluding through incarceration, there'd be a lot less incentive for mass incarceration.

Of course, that's an argument for making voting for the incarcerated the first focus, since it naturally makes it easier to solve the other problem.

That's a good point, they are quite related. Certainly not "orthogonal".

Still the reasons for mass-incarceration are multifold and how much the voting rights issue is a motivation for it is anybodies guess. There are also simply economical reasons.

I still think, it is sensible to address both issues. Addressing one will likely help the other, but I have my doubts that it will be as effective as addressing both.

> Some people should not have a voice in society - like raping murderers.

But why? If murderers should be disenfranchised then why not jaywalkers? People who leave the shopping carts in the middle of a parking lot? I would like to see people who have car alarms but don't shut them off for over five minutes be disenfranchised as well. Where does this end?

> If murderers should be disenfranchised then why not jaywalkers?

Presumably they are, if they're incarcerated. I don't see why the crime of the person should matter. What do people think they're going to vote for, a rape and murder party?

Being incarcerated is the punishment; denying the vote is just cheap populism, being seen to be 'tough on crime', with the added benefit (for politicians) that if prisoners have no vote there's no incentive to treat them humanely.

Agreed. I’m Canadian though. It’s a constitutional right here.

I don't like the idea much, but it would reduce the incentive for some to jail Black men as the only still legal way to disenfranchise them.

I don't think people are looking for a legal way to disenfranchise black men. It's an unfortunate results of a racist past.

That's not to say it's no fixable or worth fixing. It's just a very different cause.

Why does this author capitalize 'Black', but not 'white'?

I find it wrong. Acknowledge everybody equally, please.

It's a recent change by the Associated Press Style Guide. They decided to capitalize Black because they identify as a group, while whites in the US don't.

They may well end up capitalizing white as well, though historically white is usually capitalized in conjunction with white supremacist groups who see whiteness under threat. I don't identify with those groups and would not want to be part of that. But the style is changing and we'll see how this looks in a few years.

What if they vote predominantly republican? Would The Atlantic still argue in favor?

John Oliver did an anti-gerrymandering special, until he got to a seat where they split apart Blacks and Latinos. Then that was ok ->

https://youtu.be/A-4dIImaodQ?t=787

This is a totally disingenuous way to describe John Oliver's stance on the situation. Seconds later from your timestamped link, John Oliver summarizes the point of his video, which your dismissal misses: "not all weird-shaped districts are bad, and not all normal-shaped districts are good." Your reply neglects to consider different reasons why a district ends up having a weird shape.

Read more about why it makes no sense to glibly try to dunk on John Oliver with him being OK with this specific Black-Latino split, the "earmuffs" of Chicago's 4th congressional district: https://www.changeil.org/2020/03/why-chicagos-4th-congressio...

From the article:

The [federal] court favored a Republican-sponsored map that created a super-majority Latino congressional district, the 4th, today known as the “earmuffs” district. That map also preserved three super-majority African-American congressional districts in the region.

The Republican map — and this is the heart of the matter — met necessary constitutional and legal criteria to provide “fairness to the voting rights of racial and language minorities,” as mandated by Section 2 of the Federal Voting Rights Act.

People with shared interests do not live in neatly squared areas. The 4th Congressional District was created to reflect that reality.

If the district had been shaped in that way for any reason other than to protect the shared interests of a minority group like Latinos, it probably could be considered an example of cynical, partisan gerrymandering. But, in this case, it gave a strong Latino community the chance to elect someone of their own choosing to Congress.

> Seconds later from your timestamped link, John Oliver summarizes the point of his video > "not all weird-shaped districts are bad, and not all normal-shaped districts are good."

Thanks for summarising my point? I'm not sure what else to say.

We can also talk the fact John Oliver supports Jim Crow laws. Racially dividing American Blacks and American Latinos via boundaries, that's pretty messed up. But I think the Left checked out a few years ago.

And I personally don't think John Oliver supports the ear muff district. He obviously has writers and it slipped through. But it's about a world he thinks it's normal enough to let slip. He needs to take responsibility for his program.

This is a distraction. Prison needs to be abolished. Let's concentrate on that instead.

Do you have a handful of examples where this worked well?

Not abolished entirely, but every western country has a better prison system than US

Here’s a handful of examples of reducing prison intake

https://www.mic.com/articles/109138/sweden-has-done-for-its-...

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/youth-offenders_balancing-punis...

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/12/why-are-there-...

That is a different claim entirely. I am from NL btw : "better" systems have their own set of problems.

And what do we do with people who are just too dangerous to keep about?

That part is actually easy. We just send them to geowwy's neighborhood, so he could have the pleasure of getting stabbed or shot in the street for his wallet.

He didn't say anything about other punishment. There are many traditional punishments that have been used for thousands of years, some of which are still in use today. For example, the problem of shoplifting in Saudi Arabia is handled without incarceration. Maybe that is what he prefers.

If there isn't punishment, then nothing stops anybody from getting a group of friends together to dish out punishment. It'd be like Somalia. Eventually, if the group gets big and well-organized, it might be recognized internationally as the legitimate government.

Most people strongly disagree with you. You need to offer an argument, not an assertion, since you're callit for a major and unpopular change.

And if like many of my lefty friends by "abolish" you actually mean something that doesn't even come close to meaning "abolish", you're just causing problems with your abuse of language.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com