“I Don’t Think They Care”: Virginia Is Slow-Walking the Fix to a Wrongful Voter Purge
With elections weeks away, state officials admitted improperly removing some people from voter rolls. Local advocates say the state is doing too little, too late to remedy the harm.
The headline says, "I don't think they care." Wrong. They do care. They care deeply about suppressing voters.
The article is about a person who had a felony conviction in the past, which in Virginia causes you to lose your voting rights. But then they were given legal permission to vote again, and after that, the system incorrectly registered them as committing a new felony, which again removed their voting rights. The governor said he'd fix it, and their rights were restored without telling them at the last minute before an important election.
It really raises the underlying question, is there any ethical argument for denying felons the right to vote? I can't think of one. I doubt one exists. After all, it is a basic right of an adult citizen, and you don't lose your basic rights just because you're convicted of a felony. This was always about suppressing the vote of a specific demographic of people who are both more likely to vote liberal, and are more likely to be convicted of felonies.
I generally agree with the idea that one you've paid your debt to society, you should have the right to vote reinstated. However, if the felony you committed is murder, I'm not sure you should get to vote again considering you removed a voter (or voters) from the system. I don't know that you should get to vote in their place.
I'll give you an upvote because you provided an honest opinion, but I can't help but disagree with you.
First of all, because I think felons should be allowed to vote even while they are imprisoned, regardless of whether they've paid their debt. I think of it as a basic right, and I think that removing that right even further removes them from society, when we need to rehabilitate them.
Second, what you're saying doesn't make sense to me. Have they paid their debt to society or not? How can you continue officially punishing a person who has paid their debt, and treat them as a second class citizen?
Third, on a practical note, you're assuming that the murderer and the victim's votes would cancel each other out, but people tend to murder other people that they know, which means that they'll also tend to vote similarly. So, actually, if you remove the murderer's ability to vote, for all practical purposes, you're doubling the voting effect of the murder.
As a general rule of thumb, a mistake that keeps happening isn't a mistake.
The people at the top have forgotten that free and fair elections are the alternative to violence.
True. But in their defense, we've let them get away with it for quite a while. They've every reason to have forgotten.
“Accident”. “Mistake”
I was at a meeting last night where I learned that Republican poll watchers and Republican election judges, supported by the Republican County Clerk, are (illegally, of course) preventing certain Republican voters from casting their votes in Republican primary elections.
I used to work with Glenn Youngkin, he wasn't always such an absolute dipshit and such an asshole.