I just don't think a proven murder that took someone's life should have the ability to voice their opinion. Then again, I don't believe that rehabilitation is possible for first degree murder.
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Virginia's Governor Just Gave More Than 200,000 Convicted Felons the Right to Vote
- Thread starter D'ultimate
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I just don't think a proven murder that took someone's life should have the ability to voice their opinion. Then again, I don't believe that rehabilitation is possible for first degree murder.
Oh boy, tell us more about these handouts.
Also fill us in on these "gangsta thugs" you mentioned earlier.
Voost Kain
Banned
if I wasn't black maybe
It would probably help if we enabled as many people as possible in those communities to vote for the people and policies that are most likely to help them.
Orbis Tabula
Member
Oh, I see. The politician will secretly help the criminals. The politician won't tell anyone he wants to help criminals, but the criminals will know.
Your hypothesis is that the thousands of felons in our country, who are in prison for a wide variety of serious and non-serious crimes, will unilaterally act together, in an unprecedented show of political motivation, in order to vote for a guy who secretly, without telling anyway, is going to help corporations. Because if there's one thing that all psychic rapists and drug dealers want, it's more loopholes for ExxonMobil.
Oh dear.
Oh, so I suppose you're one of the good ones, huh?
Dude, you don't even have 50 posts yet. Is this really the hill you want to die on?
Also, I'm still waiting on a reply.
B-b-but what about black-on-black crime, guys?
Because adults should be able to vote how they want. We don't make perquisites that adults need to have a reason to vote.
Knew you were gonna do this once you were obviously using "thug" as a codeword for what you really want to say, so how about this, David Duke:
1) Statistically, white communities use more and harder drugs, like powder cocaine, meth, and heroin. Drugs used in white communities, however, carry little to no jail time when caught, and are largely unenforced due to their influence via money and political offices. Even when caught, a white person is more than likely just going to end up with their drugs confiscated or the police just say "don't let me catch you here again", while a black person with the same amount of weed as the white guy will end up in prison.
2) Stastistically, white on white crime is higher than black on black, by multiple percentage points. Nobody goes on about "white people shooting each other", and you're parroting the usual white supremacist line.
3) There are vastly more white people on welfare than any minority.
Now tell me again, why are you so scared of letting minority communities vote? Are you afraid the way you've been able to benefit off treating them like shit will let them have a voice and swing laws back towards being as fair to you as they are to them right now?
Link
The Autumn Wind
Maybe he's worried all those murderers will get together and get their idol Ted Cruz elected. He is the Zodiac Killer, after all.
AntraxSuicide
Banned
No, this is way off. The most important right that breaks down class is the right to vote. I don't care what your economic situation is, if you can't vote, you're second class in any country. Never deny people the vote.
Orbis Tabula
Member
Oh, it's about helping them improve their communities? Well then taking away their voices in local politics is a terrible way to do that. The powers that be can ignore their concerns even more if they can't vote.
Beer Monkey
Member
The really sad thing is that in so many states (while it was really just Florida, Iowa and Virginia) tons of ex-cons THINK that they aren't allowed to vote.
A friend of mine who got a felony conviction at age 18 for selling coke did his one year in the joint, became a productive member of society and ran his own construction business for the next 14 years before he found out that he was allowed to vote (from me). He thought he was banned from voting for life in Ohio. We have no such a law here.
A friend of mine who got a felony conviction at age 18 for selling coke did his one year in the joint, became a productive member of society and ran his own construction business for the next 14 years before he found out that he was allowed to vote (from me). He thought he was banned from voting for life in Ohio. We have no such a law here.
My main point here is I can't trust the government to be 100% correct on convictions. People incarcerated should be treated like there's a chance of them being innocent. And I don't mean let them roam free around the city or give them custom sponge baths or let them have knives, but.. rehabilitate and try to leave them like you found them, but better, if they're later exonerated.
This means not taking their right to vote away, not torturing them, and not letting them be raped and killed in prison because "they deserve it for being there".
Voost Kain
Banned
Yeah I'm not even going to go down this rode.
Race assumption posts based on absolutely nothing and white comparison charts are already here.
First of all I am black.
2 I'm not making a comparison, and saying "whites do this and blacks do that more" doesn't solve the fact it's an issue. That people are leaving alone regardless of race, and instead are complaining about letting the violators of these regardless of race, vote.
The fact we have people instantly assuming I am white and here to compare races just highlights my original point.
We are now having an argument where I (Im black once again btw) a guy above me has already been like "oh yeah, well that may be true but here are facts about white people" I don't care.
That does nothing but show both races have an issue and people here would rather not fix those problems with EITHER race and instead give the violators the right to vote when they get out of jail. If Blacks get arrested with crack 30% of the time and Whites 55% for example, neither are those numbers are good, why are we not fixing either instead of letting the violators vote when they are out of jail?
But clearly this conversation is already gone off so I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree with the issue about letting felons vote.
Anyway, off-topic forums, gotta be cautious here. Think I'll stick to gaming for awhile.
Race assumption posts based on absolutely nothing and white comparison charts are already here.
First of all I am black.
2 I'm not making a comparison, and saying "whites do this and blacks do that more" doesn't solve the fact it's an issue. That people are leaving alone regardless of race, and instead are complaining about letting the violators of these regardless of race, vote.
The fact we have people instantly assuming I am white and here to compare races just highlights my original point.
We are now having an argument where I (Im black once again btw) a guy above me has already been like "oh yeah, well that may be true but here are facts about white people" I don't care.
That does nothing but show both races have an issue and people here would rather not fix those problems with EITHER race and instead give the violators the right to vote when they get out of jail. If Blacks get arrested with crack 30% of the time and Whites 55% for example, neither are those numbers are good, why are we not fixing either instead of letting the violators vote when they are out of jail?
But clearly this conversation is already gone off so I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree with the issue about letting felons vote.
Anyway, off-topic forums, gotta be cautious here. Think I'll stick to gaming for awhile.
Orbis Tabula
Member
Just gonna leave the argument? Well, alright. At least you have the right to demonstrate your preference on these political issues.
Why not integrate people back into their communities instead of being punitive about people who were convicted of felonies that increases recidivism?
It's not like you go, okay, felons have the rights to vote, we're done here! It's a piece of a larger puzzle. Giving them self-determination in their own communities is important.
It's not like you go, okay, felons have the rights to vote, we're done here! It's a piece of a larger puzzle. Giving them self-determination in their own communities is important.
Indeed. Only by making sure everyone is allowed and able to vote will we make sure all communities interests are accurately reflected in the actions of the government.
We see that now with gerrymandering where wealthy areas vote down any taxes or expenses to help the very poor communities that need help the most. While at the same time changing voting rules to make sure the poor communities can't or don't vote. It's the exact opposite of what he seems to want to happen. Race is incidental to the poor/rich divide.
And it's one of those two pillars that divides communities that the governor just undermined, by making sure more people in those communities can vote, thus hopefully getting more future help for the communities, and preventing more crime.
Voost Kain
Banned
I don't like some of the jumpers on here coming to odd conclusions.
Not to mention you haven't really debunked anything I said so the only real person who argued with me was the other guy everyone else said the same answer ("they have a right to" or "why not") so it's a circle. No point.
Why do you think that we can't simultaneously allow ex-felons to vote and regain their rights to integrate them back into their communities while also working on helping communities in poverty in other areas?
Orbis Tabula
Member
I'm not sure what I'm supposed to debunk. Your argument is that corruption happens because we let criminals vote, despite the fact that there isn't more corruption in places where felons can vote, and there hasn't been less in places where they can't. You've also made the argument that we shouldn't do this until we fix the other problems in society, which is obviously silly as we are allowed to focus on more than one problem at a time.
Your argument relies on things happening that haven't been shown to happen, it has no evidence in its favor, and it requires ignoring every other potential solution except, apparently, cutting welfare.
I was willing to engage with you and give you the benefit of the doubt. Yet you never even acknowledged my point, instead electing to use evasive, disingenuous tactics while selectively engaging posters whose posts were easy enough for you to dance around. I don't have a problem if you disagree with allowing felons who have served their time to vote, but what I do have a problem with is when you come in with concern trolling faux-neutrality bullshit while spewing unreasoned rhetoric. You have nobody but yourself to blame for why nobody took you seriously.
Voost Kain
Banned
You are assuming all felons released back are rehabilitated good people. This is where the problem lies. The felons that aren't good people were part of the issue to begin with.
But this circle has gone on to long, so we'll agree to disagree.
Squirrel Killer
Member
When I say the real reason Rs oppose and Ds support, I'm not talking about reasonable people, I'm talking about the politicos. I have no doubt in my mind that if restoring voting rights skewed the other way that Terry McAuliffe's position would be 180 degrees around and he'd be employing the same tactics against a hypothetical R-led effort to restore voting rights.
Thank you for these links, I was looking for the exact text of the order, but couldn't find it, even on the governor's executive order page.
The one thing the R's might be keying off of is the "He shall communicate to the General Assembly, at each regular session, particulars of every case of fine or penalty remitted, of reprieve or pardon granted, and of punishment commuted, with his reasons for remitting, granting, or commuting the same." clause, although in a day and age where everything is computerized, this should be as simple as pulling a database report.
Someone said something similar earlier in the thread... is there any evidence that giving felons the franchise reduces recidivism? (FTR: I'm fully in support of restoring their voting rights.)
Voost Kain
Banned
Because your post aimed at me was based on something I never said. It sounds here you're just upset I didn't pay attention to you.
But if you want to continue there is a PM system.
stump sock
Member
there are plenty of bad people that vote all the time. these people have at least paid the debt to society that was judged appropriate for their crimes.
1. No one is assuming that.
2. There are people who have never been convicted of a crime who are bad people. We don't try to determine how good of a person someone is before we let them vote.
Orbis Tabula
Member
I can see why this conversation might be too much for Edson Farley, since he apparently can't handle the concept of trying to solve two problems at once. In his world, we can't work on the problem of disenfranchising the pro-corporate psychic drug dealer hive mind until we solve the problem of the thug community shooting each other and getting too much welfare
http://luxury.rehabs.com/the-racist-history-of-cocaine/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ImeWd5gFTo
http://www.thenation.com/article/how-myth-negro-cocaine-fiend-helped-shape-american-drug-policy/
There's actual history and context here that can't be ignored..
... but you're spouting the same racist drivel and myths that perpetuate that black on black crime is what is holding the community back, when the actual statistic means that segregation is still so high that you're more likely to end up committing or being a victim of a crime committed by someone of your own race.
Pretty easy assumption to make when you're posting actual KKK literature points. That are made up myths.
Because you're ignoring the fact that we didn't remove all the white supremacists and KKK members from office after the Civil War and other times. There was no ideology reset. They all kept their positions of power and quickly passed laws that kept them in power. Also, you can't separate the history you so want to ignore for why white and black communities are in the positions they are in today. Allowing disenfranchisement for any reason helps racists maintain the status quo. The only time mass disenfranchisement has occured in US history SOMEHOW, who would have guessed, was after black citizens gained the right to vote. Jim Crow didn't happen by accident.
Voost Kain
Banned
You need to stop with this make believe. and stop your race comparisons because that's not what I was doing. Thank You.
Yes it's worked so well for the last few decades hasn't it, the government is truly capable.
Seriously guys time to move on, we are going in circles, agree to disagree.
From here on if you want to continue the conversation (based on my argument) I'll accept it via PM.
jeff_rigby
Banned
The idea is based on Individual responsibility. If your word is worth nothing, you can't enter into a Legal contract, swearing to tell the truth or any other social contract, then they can not be allowed the vote.
A Lawyer can be barred from practicing Law for a criminal offence.... Permanently. It's assumed he is no longer worthy of trust. Same for criminals, the assumption is they can't be trusted and only in rare cases and special exceptions can the rights be restored. If it were any other way then Government would be releasing wolves and cloaking them in respectable clothing.
So does the edict also restore the other rights or just the right to vote. Can they be on a Jury, swear an oath in Court, enter into a contract?
Cornerstone Speech said:
The grandkids and further descendants of the Confederate leader and of this guy's inner circle that wrote this speech still hold office today. The guy himself, Alexander H. Stephens, was elected to Congress multiple times AFTER making this speech, and was INVOLVED in writing law afterwards. What type of laws do you think he supported? He was even elected Governor after his Congressional run.
This is a guy that openly said that black persons were objectively inferior and should be subjugated. He said it was a universal truth. And he was given power over black citizens after all of that.
Orbis Tabula
Member
"You guys may as well stop arguing with me. I'm a brick wall that will never change my opinions or directly address your claims! Agree to disagree lol!"
Squirrel Killer
Member
The Constitution is constitutional. See the 14th Amendment, Section 2.
Voost Kain
Banned
I meant the race stuff. Stop with that. That came from you jumping to a conclusion reading a post the wrong way.
uguu, s-senpai noticed me...
So that your entire argument that assumes laws are neutral and objective can only work as long as we ignore that white supremacists held office, still hold office, and were able to install as many racist laws as they wanted to, even after being traitors to their own country? Not to mention the near 100 years up to that point where black persons were Constitutionally defined as being worth 3/5ths a white person?
You can't just discard everything before four years ago as not relevant as to why laws and situations are they way they are today. This was proven by how fucking fast the racist-controlled states moved to disenfranchise voters once the Voting Rights Act was overturned by the Supreme Court. They didn't even wait a fucking month to start blocking and removing people's rights to vote. We have GOP party officials bragging that disenfranchising voters have won them elections. The only reason to have disenfranchisement is to get rid of the groups you don't like so you can cater to the ones you do with impunity.
Voost Kain
Banned
Most of the states passed criminal disenfranchisement laws in the mid 1800s leading up to right before the civil war, when black citizens started gaining citizen rights in new states and territories. Many of them stipulated that it was for ANY crime that put you in jail, not just felonies.
And then, no surprise after the Civil War:
Look closely again. You literally lost your right to vote in Alabama for being mixed race or being with someone of another race.
Also, the Senate tried to pass a bill giving felons the right to vote.. guess who shows up again?
Voost Kain
Banned
Which implies that these laws were in place before Blacks were given the right to vote.
But anyway maybe you misunderstood my point. My point was that we should be keeping people OUT of jail instead of bandaid solutions. That way they won't have to worry about losing the rights to vote.
That applies to EVERYONE.
Orbis Tabula
Member
Or...we could do both!
Voost Kain
Banned
Why would we reward bad behavior over good behavior?
You seem to be missing the part where a bunch of laws put minorities in jail for BS reasons, and are applied disproportionally harshly on those of color vs a white person in the same situation even when appearing neutral. It's part of the racist machinery to process people through the system to disaffect and marginalize them. They're just doing it under legal cover. 'Good behavior' is defined by.. I'll let you figure it out.
Voost Kain
Banned
You are correct, but how many of those are class 1-2 felonies?
We are talking about felons not going to jail because you had weed.
Orbis Tabula
Member
We don't do one over the other...we do both! Forgive bad behavior, reward good behavior.
Princess Carl
Member
What a fucking joke of a post.
Voost Kain
Banned
To be fair I wasn't thinking about race when I made my argument. I was focusing on general felonies.
I do understand that people are places in jail for BS laws. And in that case, I can see why it would be fair to give those people the right to vote. However I don't believe a significant number of those people are "felons" but more commonly misdemeanors.
I'm talking about Felons, Class 1-3 or A-c depending on state. Serious bad crimes. Harder to BS.
Of course if someone had the statistics then I would have more information on that.
I do understand that people are places in jail for BS laws. And in that case, I can see why it would be fair to give those people the right to vote. However I don't believe a significant number of those people are "felons" but more commonly misdemeanors.
I'm talking about Felons, Class 1-3 or A-c depending on state. Serious bad crimes. Harder to BS.
Of course if someone had the statistics then I would have more information on that.
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