Justices Refuse to Review Inmate Voting Rights

[Freddie Stubbs]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to decide a legal dispute over whether states can prevent convicted felons from voting.

Acting after last week's elections, the justices refused to consider an appeal in cases from Washington and New York state on the reach of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibits voter disqualification based on race.

Every state in the nation except Maine and Vermont deny the right to vote to convicted felons in prison. Most of the laws also deny the right to vote to felons on parole or probation, and 14 states ban felons from voting even after they have served their sentences, civil rights experts said.

Nearly 5 million felons who have been released from prison are legally disenfranchised, the experts estimated. Some 1.4 million black men, or 13 percent of the total, remain permanently disenfranchised.

more: http://reuters.myway.com//article/20041108/2004-11-08T155441Z_01_N01668850_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-COURT-VOTING-DC.html

[Xipe Totec]

1. I think we're missing the big picture on this one.

Consider that the inmate population in a state gets included when allocating electoral votes. If you have a state with a large population of inmates that does not give voting rights to them, then you have artificially inflated the power of the voting residents of the state.

Isn't that is a violation of the equal protection clause?

[Freddie Stubbs]

2. The same would go for states with large immigrant populations

Or states with a larger than average youth population.

[Xipe Totec]

3. The difference is mobility

Only the inmates can be involuntarily concentrated for the purpose of changing electoral vote counts. You could not round up the young and force them to move into a single state. Same applies to immigrants.

(on edit)

Though I wonder how the electoral map would change if EVs were aportioned based on registered voter populations...

[tinymontgomery]

4. They can't round us up yet

but how long until they do?

[Freddie Stubbs]

8. Someone should start a pool on that

[liberalnurse]

5. Excellent point.

That should change the Electral College numbers for such states.

[NorthernSpy]

6. why are we more concerned with PREVENTING citizens from voting

Than with making sure that elections are free, fair, and well attended?

Why are we more concerned with denying prisoners the ballot than with deterring the almighty State from imprisoning so many people to begin with?

[OutsourceBush]

7. If they were mostly repukes they would roll out the red carpet

for them. Guaranteed