Paying your debt to society
Apparently the military is granting waivers to people with criminal records. This isn't a big problem in principle. I think that people deserve a second chance if they've paid their dues (to stretch the fiduciary metaphor that I started with the title of this thread). And I don't hold the military to a very high moral standard, anyway, so what ev', Bev. Although I have to say that the rock climbing in those recruiting commercials is pretty extreme.
If you're going to let ex-cons serve in the military, why not let them vote, too? My implication here is a bit premature, since I don't know if any of these guys are felons, who are still banned for life in Virginia, Kentucky, and Florida from voting (if anyone has information on the category of offenses committed by soldiers who have received waivers, please post a comment - I'm curious).
Of course, the issue of voter disenfranchisement gained some newsprint during the 2000 Election, and a lot of people said that Gore would've won (hah, I initially wrote "Bore would've won" - oh, what a cleverly placed slip!) if ex-felons had the vote in Florida. It wasn't that there are legions of liberal ex-cons in Florida just bursting to vote Democrat - I think it's safe to say that there aren't. It's the fact that people were taken off voting lists because they have the same names as ex-felons. That's what happens when you let ChoicePoint handle your voter registry list. In fairness to ChoicePoint, they acquired the firm that handled the voter registry list in Florida, DBT, after the election. I'm sure the average voter appreciates the nuance.
Bitching aside, a bunch of states (my imprecise wording is an indication that I don't know exactly how many) have moved towards re-enfranchisement for ex-felons. But Demos, a lefty think tank, posits that no other democracy in the world permanently takes the right to vote away.
Wait, how'd I get talking about voting?? Oh, I was talking about letting former criminals fight in Iraq, while curtailing their right to vote. I know that the comparison is not perfect, especially since voting is solely in the hands of the states, while military service in war is overseen at the federal level. I think that placing the outcome of an election or the prosecution of a war in the hands of ex-criminals is a dodgy proposition in any case, so the question then becomes, where do ex-criminals fit in our society? We might want to start paying attention to this question, since the prison population in this country isn't shrinking.
If you're going to let ex-cons serve in the military, why not let them vote, too? My implication here is a bit premature, since I don't know if any of these guys are felons, who are still banned for life in Virginia, Kentucky, and Florida from voting (if anyone has information on the category of offenses committed by soldiers who have received waivers, please post a comment - I'm curious).
Of course, the issue of voter disenfranchisement gained some newsprint during the 2000 Election, and a lot of people said that Gore would've won (hah, I initially wrote "Bore would've won" - oh, what a cleverly placed slip!) if ex-felons had the vote in Florida. It wasn't that there are legions of liberal ex-cons in Florida just bursting to vote Democrat - I think it's safe to say that there aren't. It's the fact that people were taken off voting lists because they have the same names as ex-felons. That's what happens when you let ChoicePoint handle your voter registry list. In fairness to ChoicePoint, they acquired the firm that handled the voter registry list in Florida, DBT, after the election. I'm sure the average voter appreciates the nuance.
Bitching aside, a bunch of states (my imprecise wording is an indication that I don't know exactly how many) have moved towards re-enfranchisement for ex-felons. But Demos, a lefty think tank, posits that no other democracy in the world permanently takes the right to vote away.
Wait, how'd I get talking about voting?? Oh, I was talking about letting former criminals fight in Iraq, while curtailing their right to vote. I know that the comparison is not perfect, especially since voting is solely in the hands of the states, while military service in war is overseen at the federal level. I think that placing the outcome of an election or the prosecution of a war in the hands of ex-criminals is a dodgy proposition in any case, so the question then becomes, where do ex-criminals fit in our society? We might want to start paying attention to this question, since the prison population in this country isn't shrinking.
posted by Bloggalicious at 18:25
1 Comments:
Thanks for the comment and for the info. I agree, the Huffington post made it sound like there were legions of felons running around in Iraq, which made me a bit suspicious.
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