Selling our vote — transferring it to someone else —is properly considered corrupt and illegal. To prevent current rulers from enacting legislation narrowing the number of people to whom they are accountable, voting should be an "inalienable" right in two senses: that we cannot give or sell our vote to someone else, and that government cannot deprive us of that right for any reason.
After all, we like to think we live in a democracy, and in a democracy voters choose the government rather than government choosing the voters.
Unfortunately, most state governments have stripped the right to vote from people incarerated for a felony.
But felons are not exempted from paying taxes. If we really believe that there should be "no taxation without representation" even those who are currently in prison should be allowed to vote.
A few states do allow voting by the imprisoned. Others allow voting once the person gets out.
But some states still permanently deprive those ever convicted of a felony of the right to vote, no matter how long they have been out.
A few years ago, Florida voters endorsed restoration of voting rights to most felons who have completed their sentence, but this reform was sabotaged, probably for partisan advantage, by the state Legislature.
The reason Donald Trump, who was convicted of a number of felonies, was still allowed to vote in Florida was that Florida law specifies that the right to vote of people convicted outside of the state is determined by the law of the state in which the conviction took place. New York law therefore applies, and it allows voting by convicts if they are not currently incarcerated.
More recently, Americans were again discussing whether people convicted of a felony should be allowed to vote. This time, the issue was in Nebraska.
In Nebraska, before 2005 people currently or formerly imprisoned for a felony were not allowed to vote. In 2005, felons who had completed their punishment were allowed to vote after waiting for two years.
This year the Legislature voted overwhelmingly to allow felons to vote immediately when they had completed their sentence.
So far, so good. Although governments have no legitimate right to deprive prisoners of the right to vote in the first place, Nebraska was at least taking major steps in the right direction.
However, the state attorney general wrote an opinion holding both the 2005 and the 2024 legislation unconstitutional under the Nebraskan constitution. The Nebraskan secretary of state told state election officials to stop registering released convicts unless they had been pardoned by the state board of pardons.
The question then went before the state supreme court, the ultimate authority on interpreting the state constitution.
Interpreting state constitutions — which tend to be long and packed with arcane details — is a thicket into which I am unwilling to venture.
Mercifully, the state supreme court upheld the authority of the Legislature to allow released convicts to vote.
Unfortunately, felon disenfranchisement does not appear to be unconstitutional under our federal Constitution.
Language in the 14th Amendment reduces a state's representation in Congress if the right to vote is "denied" or "in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime." This "except for" implicitly seems to authorize, but not require, denying felons the right to vote.
But merely because something is constitutional does not mean that it is good.
Lest I be accused of inadaquate reverence for the Constitution, let me note in closing that even the men who wrote that Constitution did not claim that it was perfect. (If it had been perfect, why would they have included an amendment clause in it — to make a perfect document imperfect?)
As Alexander Hamilton noted in Federalist No. 85, "I never expect to see a perfect work from imperfect men." But he defended the proposed Constitution as "the best that the present views and circumstances of the country will permit" and strongly urged the states to ratify it.
Fortunately, they did.
Nothing in that original Constitution, or in the amendments to it, requires the states to disenfranchise felons. They should not do so.
Paul F. deLespinasse is Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Computer Science at Adrian College. Read Professor Paul F. deLespinasse's Reports — More Here.
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.