In light of a new poll showing 75% of Americans disagreeing with presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ advocacy of allowing prison inmates to vote, it’s worth revisiting why Sanders’ proposal immediately sounds ludicrous to so many of us.
A key distinction I want to make first and again is between human rights and civic-political rights. The latter, in truth, are conditional privileges.
A human right is one we consider to pre-exist society itself, by virtue of endowment by God. Those rights are regulable only at the extremes. Civic-political rights are those which stem from a person’s status as a citizen of a state deriving just power from the consent of the governed. Such “rights” are nowhere near absolute; they are always subject to restriction and forfeiture for bad behavior, and indeed, we see them forfeited frequently.
The rights to life, free speech, and free religious practice are examples of human rights. Even an imprisoned convict enjoys them. The right to freedom of movement, on the other hand, is a civic-political right that comes with conditions. It is applicable only in certain places (the public commons, but perhaps not on private property) and can be entirely forfeited for a period of time, which is what happens to people imprisoned upon criminal conviction.
The franchise is likewise a civic-political right. It is regulable by states exercising restrictions on “times, places, and manner,” and it is forfeitable for criminal behavior. To most people, this makes perfectly good sense. To swipe an example from our newsroom debate, if you are in prison for shooting my neighbor, why should your vote be allowed to cancel out mine? Likewise, should those currently being punished for harming society be permitted to exercise power over it by choosing its leaders?
If voting is not a human right, then prudential judgment must be applied when considering when the ordinary and strong presumption in its favor should be negated. The question boils down to an assessment of the value of suspending the privilege.
One argument for not suspending the privilege is that it doesn’t really serve the goal of deterrence, which is a major goal of a criminal-justice system. To leave a murderer with his freedom of movement or his gun rights is to endanger people, but a murderer voting is not endangering people. So, this argument would have it, there is a compelling state interest in disarming criminals and even locking them up but not in disenfranchising them.
On the other hand, 75% of Americans believe, in effect, that deterrence is hardly the main consideration of incarceration. It’s a matter of voting being a privilege reserved to those who have not abused their status as citizens, much the same way (although obviously of greater importance) that community swimming-pool privileges are revoked from those who won’t abide by rules and community standards.
As I argued last week, the conditional restoration of voting privileges also can serve as part of the rehabilitation process — but only if those privileges are forfeited, upon conviction, in the first place. In essence, we are merely asking the convict to earn back the privilege he, by his own choices, relinquished through criminal behavior penalized by due process of law.
All but the most heinous of offenders deserve new leases on life after serving their sentences. Society should do far more to make those leases realizable. Restoration of voting privileges should be part of that process.
But during their period of punishment, criminals should lose the rights of full citizenship, including the ability to cast votes deciding whether to tax or regulate those good citizens who faithfully observe the duly enacted law.
[Related: Pete Buttigieg breaks with Bernie Sanders on allowing felons to vote from prison]
