Also, seems kind of scary that this implies a future where so many people are in prison that their vote could actually tip the balance ?
Creating a class of prison slaves who have no right to vote with no possibility of upward mobility is a feature, not a bug. Add to that the difficulty of obtaining affordable healthcare/tying it to a job, gutting education, making child labor legal, making abortion illegal, etc., etc., and that plan becomes pretty obvious.
Can we be totally honest here and just state what the fear is?
If slaves could vote they’d vote for freedom.
There’s a hole the size of a railroad junction in the 13nd amendment.
There’s a hole the size of a railroad junction in the 13nd amendment.
It’s less of a loophole and more of a loop-archway… with bright neon signs to advertise it.
This. The whole thing is 100% by design, any other reasoning is a distraction created, again by design, to get us to look the other way.
Don’t.It’s a recipe for creating monsters similar to how intervention in the middle east created those terrorists and their symbiotic relationship with the military industrial complex. That plan is so ridiculously evil and doomed to fail that I can’t help but think there’s some second order effect that they’re going for here.
The monsters aren’t the ones being created, the monsters are the ones creating those circumstances to begin with.
I know you didn’t mean anything by it, but that shift in focus is really important to point out, because those same people rely on you and me to see the poor people who’s lives they destroyed as the problem, instead of whose who really are.
I’ve meant some pretty monstrous people created by this system. I’ve met lots of people who’s risk reward system has been almost completely rewired so that they find the most enjoyment in making other people suffer. And this isn’t just my psychiatric inpatients, sometimes it’s some of the staff members, and sometimes when those staff members know they can’t get away with doing it to the patients they do it to newer and more junior staff members. And they justify it in all kinds of fucked up ways (in particular expecting unreasonable and honestly humiliating measures of “respect” but never returning even a shred of true respect). The whole thing is just fear and pain all the way down.
None of that changes the fact that it is the system that creates that kind of behaviour by encouraging and rewarding selfishness, greed, hate, and doing whatever it takes to “succeed”.
I’m not denying that there are horrible people out there (I’ve been victim to a few personally), or that they shouldn’t be held responsible for individual actions if they harm others (they should), but in almost all cases you can’t blame them for turning out that way (again, not excusing any harm they go on to cause to others) when you look at the circumstances they need to exist in. Circumstances designed by a handful of people reaping unfathomable benefits.
So I’d much sooner point my finger at those who are actually to blame, instead of at those who are the fucked up products of their system, because one of those not only creates infinitely more damage than the other, but also it’s only that same group that have the power to do anything to stop it.
Begs the question of if the Stanford prison experiment ever really ended.
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The US is nuts. You can vote from prison in Canada
Same thing in the Netherlands. You can have someone vote for you in your stead.
I believe the same is true in Vermont and Maine, but 2 out of 50 isn’t great.
If you can take away the right to vote as punishment for a crime, and make anything a crime, then you can take away anyone’s right to vote. This reinforces the concept of the ‘precariat’.
Also the same in Australia. In fact, it’s required by law for them to vote (as it is for all eligible voters)
Although not in the EU anymore, I think the UK has managed to find some way of preventing prisoners from voting across the years.
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But if that were really true why ever release them at all? Why not go the full China approach with capital punishment and organ donation?
I think it’s just a legacy from older laws, especially against gangs in smaller communities, etc.
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Tbf china and north korea are not as bad as the media portrays them as Prison camp = prison Slave labour = prison labour
Both disproportionately imprison and kill minorities, but isn’t that also what the US does
Given the rights prisoners have in many other countries, it might be better to say that things are just as bad in the US as the media paints other countries.
Because, uh, prison labour is pretty fucking awful, especially when considering that y’all gots them private prisons down there.
I’m Finnish, so I know the situation in the US is bad But yeah media likes to hide the country’s problems in most countries
You’re assuming that the point of the American justice system IS to refrain and rehabilitate. It’s not.
A for-profit prison system seriously is low-key the most fucked up thing in a country full of fucked up things.
American prisons exist to make a profit for their investors. They do this by both government subsidies (which are calculated per inmate) and using the prisoners as cheap labor that they legally only have to pay pennies.
The system NEEDS a continuous influx of prisoners (slaves) to remain profitable. Rehabilitation is anathema to that.
It us not just petty or counterproductive. It is violating the basic principle of democracy itself.
What could go wrong with giving a democratic government the power to strip voting rights from those people they deem unsuitable to vote on how they are governed? /s
“/s”…? You just lost the right to vote.
The US criminal justice system has never been for rehabilitation. No sane person thinks jail makes someone less likely to commit crimes.
It worked out for my brother and I’ve always been surprised by that.
That’s good to hear. I hope he’s doing well.
But that’s what’s often missed regarding statistics. It’s true for a large group of people but can’t say anything about the individual.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I believe recidivism is a real problem and that my brother got on the straight and narrow perhaps just as much inspite of his 4 years in prison as because of.
Oh yes, I got that you knew that. I was speaking about the others, sorry that I didn’t make that clear enough.
When you also can escalate certain crimes (like cannabis) to target portions of the population it gets pretty dystopian already.
One vote might not matter much, but 4.6 million votes can swing elections. It’s really fucking weird how that country calls itself a democracy when it does this, allows rampant gerrymandering, have a very uneven vote weight depending on where you live, and, just as icing on the cake, allows slavery in some specific instances.
Doesn’t the US also have the largest population of prisoners in the entire world too?
Currently China, per capita El Salvador. US scores second most population wise (3rd most populous country, so it’s not that unreasonable?) and 5th per capita (No excuse).
The US appears to have been slowly going down a little bit, some times when it feels like it, more so if you’re white, with a big drop during Covid.
Interesting. I can imagine China’s high rate of incarceration is due to the CCCP and El Salvador is due to the cartels. Wonder how many of those in prison in the US are there for pretty drug crimes though…
What is the CCCP? You mean Communist Party of China?
It’s not strange at all when you consider your own phrasing: calls itself a democracy.
Plenty of places do that. Doesn’t make it so.
It also seems very undemocratic. The idea of democracy is that everyone can vote
True. But the US was founded by the rich, white elite for the rich, white elite.
Always fun to remember that the US threw off the shackles of oppression due to a 3% tax rate.
If people who break laws can’t vote, and the government decides what the law is and appoints the judges who enforce those laws, then the government currently in power can decide who gets to vote. Obviously there’s an incentive there to make laws that disproportionately affect those who weren’t going to vote for you, and thereby remove most of your opposition’s votes. That way lies dictatorship.
It also makes it hard to change bad laws. For a random example, there used to be laws against homosexuality. How do you think LGBT acceptance in law would be doing if anyone who was openly gay or trans lost their right to vote? How do you improve access to abortion if anyone who has an abortion, provides an abortion, teaches young people about abortion, or seeks information about abortions becomes unable to vote? How do you change any unjust law if the only people who can vote are those who are unaffected - or indeed, those who benefit from the status quo?
See, e.g., the war on “drugs”
The GOP has been working towards making the US a dictatorship since the 60s. We passed the civil rights act and the right was so appalled that they had to treat people of color like, well, people, that they’ve been coming up with new ways to ensure progress never happens again ever since.
Preach.
Also keep in mind that they count those prisoners in as part of the census, which affects how resources are distributed.
So they’re counted, but don’t get a vote. Ripe for abuse by unscrupulous politicians.
It’s almost like they shouldn’t be counted at all unless they are free to vote. But the states with significant prison populations wouldn’t go for that. Maybe we can compromise. Perhaps only 3 out of every 5 disenfranchised prisoners should count for representation purposes.
The only problem there is that the count also determines how federal money is distributed. Undocumented/illegal immigrants still use interstates and water mains and disaster money and national parks and federal buildings. Unless we want funding cut, we still have to count them.
*Edit: I’m embarrassed that I got all that written before 3/5 hit me. “The only problem” 😬
You’d have to eliminate children and immigrants too if you did that, but those new numbers wouldn’t reflect reality in most communities with so many people being excluded from the census.
Small quibble here, but illegal immigrants are absolutely counted in the census, obviously they are under-counted, but they are intended to be counted. No one is “excluded” from the census.
I was more referring to green card holders, but that’s exactly my point. By excluding people based on whether they can vote or not, you get inaccurate results and make the whole process pointless.
Small quibble, but the census came up with about 331 million people, and there are almost 8 billion people on the planet. Clearly, some are excluded from the census.
Hardy har.
Within my facetious response is a kernel of truth: some of those people within US borders are foreign tourists. Surely, a French high school class touring Washington DC shouldn’t be counted on the census.
When someone overstays their visa, at what point do they stop being “foreign persons” and start being “undocumented Americans”? At what point is it reasonable to start counting them as our own?
Oh shit, I never even thought about that. It’s another level of insidious. 1. Be republican 2. Get a huge prison in your district “for the jobs”, 3. Get more positions guaranteed to be republican, since the voters in your district still are. Would work for a democrat too, they don’t care about criminal justice reform either :(
Might work slightly better for republicans because they can work the identity politics angle more easily.
Because they aren’t getting rid of one vote, but tens of thousands.
There are a lot of Republican states that are Republican mainly due to voter suppression.
It’s win/win for them. Thousands of fewer (likely mostly) Democratic leaning voters, and thousands of additional people counted in their census.
the point was to reform them into civic minded individuals ?
That was never the point.
Rehabilitation has never been the goal. The goal is free labor pool and punishment. The cruelty is the point.
There are already enough potential voters who have been imprisoned, not the future, such that they could tip the balance. If you’re not sure if this is case, just look at how hard the GOP acts to block reinstatement of voting rights for ex felons.
