Pick a conflict

[FartinMowler]

If a small community has a large prison and all the inmates could vote in the local election...well, you get what I mean.

[punkgrrrlie10]

No I don't...

[davinxtk]

He's making the bad point that these convicted felons could sway local elections.
The reason the point is bad is that local elections don't mean jack shit to prisoners, unless they're maybe trying to get a selectman, representative, or senator that might be buddies with the governor to pardon one or two of them. Even then, it's far fetched that they'd get the vote of the entire prison or make much of an impact on the situation even if they did.

[kellychaos]

If you're going to use that logic, Fartin, then those prisoners wouldn't be voting for local elections since support for prisons begin at the county level and, more than likely, most of the prisoners are originally from that area. In turn, state penetentaries would get state voting privileges and federal prisoners, federal voting privileges. Thus, none of the polluted voting you predicted would occur.

Although I believe that certain levels of crime should revoke a person's voting privileges, Conus does raise an interesting point. What may have been considered a serious crime years ago, and may have gotten someone's voting privileges revoked, may not be considered so serious today due to changing beliefs, societal morrays, legal statutes, expanding prison populations, ect. You may even, as a felon, be in the reverse situation. So now you are basically screwed just due to a chronological spin of the wheel.

[punkgrrrlie10]

It's stupid to think that barring a group of voters based on class would help "protect the vote" from "mainstream" society.

I could make all kinds of classification based on that argument. It was used against Blacks, women, etc. b/c there could be so many that vote that the white man is not represented anymore.

I could say once someone achieves CEO status, I don't want them to vote b/c they have money and don't represent the rest of society and what they want and if there are so many then they get what they want and that's not fair...how exactly does that make sense?

If there are that many prisoners convicted in jail where they are a majority in a jurisdiction, I think that represents a bigger problem than voting rights.

[kellychaos]

Originally Posted by punkgrrrlie10

I could say once someone achieves CEO status, I don't want them to vote b/c they have money and don't represent the rest of society and what they want and if there are so many then they get what they want and that's not fair...how exactly does that make sense.

Good point. Additionally, I think that the rich ALREADY have a decided political advantage and/or say so in receiving public services, appointing local boards/commisions, ect.