How come there are people who will fight to make sure felons don’t have the ability to vote, but they will try to vote a felon into the Oval Office? What is the logic behind this way of thinking, because from the outside looking in it seems hypocritical, and annoyingly paradoxical.
Felons should be able to vote and people who believe otherwise are self-contradictory. I realize that there are two parts of this opinion, so let’s break it down.
Felons, according to May Law LLP, are “Individuals who are given more than one year in prison for a criminal offense have been charged with a felony, and therefore are considered felons. Felony offenses can be quite similar to misdemeanor offenses, in the sense that they are often times misdemeanor offenses intensified.”
You know the story of someone who was in a bad situation, who was desperate, and needed to do something, anything to survive and then they got arrested? They get labeled as a felon and when they finish their sentence, they are picked apart by the outside world. It’s usually harder for people to get a job, they have prejudice formed against them, and their right to vote as a citizen is stripped away forever. That label is forever.
It is also no secret that the US’s mass incarceration rate is a huge problem. It’s also no secret that mass incarceration is usually most impacted on black and Hispanic people. According to Pew Research, Black adults are more likely than any other group to favor allowing convicted felons to vote after serving their sentences.
America has a history of incarcerating people who look a certain way, or are from a certain place. We have or had policies like “stop and frisk”, mandatory minimums, and “three strikes” laws that were targeted towards black and brown people with low socioeconomic status. Think of the Central Park Five. Think of Walter McMillian. Think of all the people who were wrongly accused or convicted because of prejudice and the presumption of guilt.
Even when looking at the statistics, the most committed crimes are ones of larceny and/or theft. Not to say those crimes aren’t wrong, but they’re not violent. There is a prejudice against felons that automatically makes them stigmatized as violent. I know that’s part of the reason why felons aren’t trusted to vote.
All that to say, felons live in this country too. It’s not black and white. Four million Americans will be unable to vote in the upcoming 2024 election due to felony disenfranchisement laws.
A felon is not equivalent to a murderer or a rapist, especially when our justice system is corrupt. At least six in ten among both parties also favor allowing convicted felons to vote after serving their sentences. Four million Americans being unable to vote in the upcoming 2024 election due to felony disenfranchisement laws is too many.
Trump supporters who don’t support felon voting rights are, like I said before, paradoxical.
Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felony charges for a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election through a hush money payment to a porn actor who said the two had sex.
If the state of our democracy wasn’t on the line, this situation would be almost hilarious.
We should not block felons from voting, especially if half of America is trying to make one president.
