"No person who has been convicted of a felony shall be qualified to vote unless his civil rights have been restored by the Governor or other appropriate authority." -- Virginia Constitution, Article II, Section 1.
This provision is clearly intended to allow the Governor to restore voting rights, among other rights, upon an individualized determination that the person has actually "gone straight." Is it limited to that? Former Governor Tim Kaine (D) thought so.
Or does it empower a governor to effectively repeal the disqualification provision by entering a sweeping restoration of voting rights to all felons? Present Governor Terry McAuliffe (also D) thinks so. The WSJ has this editorial.
Why does Governor McAuliffe want more criminals to vote, whether they are rehabilitated or not? Simple. Criminals perceive -- correctly -- that on the whole Democrats are more likely to favor their interests as opposed to the interests of law-abiding people. That tendency has been somewhat less pronounced in recent years than it was in earlier years, but the difference is coming back, as noted Bill's and my posts of Monday.
Hence, criminals -- especially those who have not gone straight -- will vote for the Democratic Party in greater proportion than law-abiding people do, and in a close election the criminal vote may tip the scale. After 2000, the Florida recount, and all that, we must recognized that such matters could have serious consequences.
The editorial notes that the Virginia Supreme Court heard arguments on the question Tuesday.
This provision is clearly intended to allow the Governor to restore voting rights, among other rights, upon an individualized determination that the person has actually "gone straight." Is it limited to that? Former Governor Tim Kaine (D) thought so.
Or does it empower a governor to effectively repeal the disqualification provision by entering a sweeping restoration of voting rights to all felons? Present Governor Terry McAuliffe (also D) thinks so. The WSJ has this editorial.
Why does Governor McAuliffe want more criminals to vote, whether they are rehabilitated or not? Simple. Criminals perceive -- correctly -- that on the whole Democrats are more likely to favor their interests as opposed to the interests of law-abiding people. That tendency has been somewhat less pronounced in recent years than it was in earlier years, but the difference is coming back, as noted Bill's and my posts of Monday.
Hence, criminals -- especially those who have not gone straight -- will vote for the Democratic Party in greater proportion than law-abiding people do, and in a close election the criminal vote may tip the scale. After 2000, the Florida recount, and all that, we must recognized that such matters could have serious consequences.
The editorial notes that the Virginia Supreme Court heard arguments on the question Tuesday.
Even taking as a given all you have to say here, Kent, what theory of democracy and voting rights justifies saying that any and all persons who have ever been found guilty of (any? serious?) crime can and should be permanently prevented from having a role as a voter in our democracy.
I presume you would think it too much to permanently disenfranchise any and everyone who ever got a parking or speeding ticket. But especially given the modern tendency of the regulatory --- often lamented by Bill and others on the right --- to turn lots of minor infractions into crimes, a broad criminal disenfranchisement law risks, in my view, a real blow to an inclusive democracy.
Of course, the Framers and many of prior generations long embraced the view that only "certain types" of people --- e.g., only landowners, only white men, only people who could read, only those over 21 --- could be expected to exercise the franchise the "proper way." But unless and until you provide a sound principle for why, especially once a criminal has finished his duly imposed punishment, they should be forever barred from voting, I tend to view arguments for disenfrachisement to be just as politically motivated as any effort to broadly re-enfranchise.
Neither in this post nor anywhere else have I said or implied that all persons who have ever committed a crime must be permanently deprived of the vote.
To the best of my knowledge, no state takes away the vote for conviction of a misdemeanor, and I would oppose any proposal to do so.
Felonies should only be serious crimes. Any statute that makes a nonserious crime a felony should be amended. A crime serious enough to properly be designated a felony is serious enough to lose the right to vote, at least temporarily. A felon, by definition, has committed a serious breach of the social contract, and he ought not have a voice in making society's rules until he has demonstrated that he has rejoined civil society.
For felonies below what I regard as the top tier, there should be a process to regain the vote after a period of demonstrated obedience to the law and self-support.
Murderers and rapists should generally never vote again. However, the executive clemency power should be available to deal with exceptional cases.
A sound and defensible approach, Kent, to these issues. But, as you surely realize, Virginia precludes the vote for all felons forever, and I believe distribution of just an ounce of marijuana can qualify as a felony.
And I strongly suspect that a significant number of folks historically permanently disenfranchised in VA (and a number of other states) are not murderers and rapists. Thus, even applying your own criteria, the VA Gov's enfranchisement efforts probably vindicate your basic approach to disenfranchisement more than it undermines it. Again, I say this not to dispute the allegation that this move was done for purely political reasons, but to highlight that those not focused on the short-term politics might still applaud the effort to spread the franchise.
I do not agree that this move vindicates my approach more than it undermines it. A blanket restoration includes a great many people who remain in their criminal ways as well as people who have committed exceptionally grave offenses. Moreover, it removes the political incentive to reach a political compromise on the basic rule.
The extension of the franchise we are talking about here is fundamentally different from all those of the past. In the past we broke down barriers that kept people from voting because of circumstances not of their own making. Felon disenfranchisement removes the vote because of circumstances entirely of their own making.
Not every extension of the franchise is good. Some limitations are there for good reason, and a fundamental breach of the social contract is a good reason.
"the VA Gov's enfranchisement efforts"
You ought describe McAuliffe's authoritarian act as
'disenfranchisement efforts':
single-handedly reversing the elected will of the people.
Legislators are to legislate; executives are not.
Perhaps "liberal America" might call him "Mussolini
... so often and so glibly", but don't hold your breath.
Doug --
As a debate strategy, staying on offense has the defects of its virtues.
Instead of defending the practice Gov. McAuliffe has undertaken and Kent highlights -- a blunderbuss, one-size-fits-all, mass voting restoration -- you leap to the opposite extreme (every jaywalker gets permanently barred), and worry that this is incompatible with the American ideal.
But this has nothing to do with the question now being litigated in Virginia. No one says disenfranchisement should apply to all; no one says re-enfranchisement should always or even often be barred; no one says that the Governor lacks this power, exercised as envisioned when it was created.
The basic question is whether re-enfranchisement is essentially a political instrument (to engorge the voting base of the party in power), or instead is a method to re-integrate offenders into civic life as EACH OFFENDER, given his own record -- and hardly having to meet an exacting test -- demonstrates that he has learned enough to merit fully restored civic participation.
No previous governor in this state has thought the former. The reason the present Governor thinks it has more to do with his background than with the backgrounds of the affected felons (since theirs intentionally is being ignored -- indeed, McAuliffe has said individual facts don't matter. So much for nuance and all that).
McAuliffe's background, of course, is the one that matters. He is a former chairman of the DNC and a bundler for Hillary.
P.S. I've been disappointed and puzzled that SL&P had but one very brief and generalized post on the Dallas police assassinations, and not a word about the subsequent police murders in Baton Rouge. These have been by far the biggest criminal law stories of 2016, as they should be given what they show about the hatred of police that BLM, among many others, has spent years fanning.
The murders may not directly concern sentencing, yet, but they touch directly related topics I have seen get lots and lots of coverage at SL&P.
Using reverse racism or false claims of racism to abuse the balance of power:
“Today Republicans filed a lawsuit to preserve a policy of disenfranchisement
that has been used intentionally to suppress the voices of qualified voters,
particularly African Americans, for more than a century,” [McAuliffe]
v.
“But Virginia has prohibited felons from voting since at least 1830 —
decades before African-Americans could vote.” [Charles J. Cooper,
Republican director of Legal Counsel under President Reagan]
&
“A blanket order restoring the voting rights of everyone would be a
rewrite of the law rather than a contemplated use of the executive
clemency powers,” “And, the notion that the Constitution of the
Commonwealth could be rewritten via executive order is troubling.”
[Democrat senior counsel, Mark Rubin]
&
One of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is former Alexandria, Va., Vice-
Mayor Bill C. Cleveland, who is African American.