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What do you think about restoring the voting rights to individuals who have felonies on their criminal records?
Pros? Cons? Case-by-case basis?Thank you 🙂
Felons vote Democrat.
Keep the current law that they cannot vote.
Do released felons (who have finished serving the sentence) pay taxes? Are they subject to laws passed by the legislature? Do they use services provided by the elected government? Does the phrase “no taxation without representation” sound familiar to anyone?
Does it matter the more than any other factor (economic status, family background, ethnicity, gender), the factor that most closely correlates with criminal behavior is age. Young people tend to make mischief and get into trouble, and the propensity to do so decline over time (as the people grow older and wiser), which suggests a good reason not to overly penalize a grownup over something they did when they were a kid.
If people with felony records are not allowed to return to being full citizens, their position encourages more crime.
A better question might be whether illiterates should have the right to vote.
Voter registration requirements in the USA are left to the individual states as long as they do not violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965 as amended.
Different states have different rules. Some allow felons to vote from prison, some =never restore voting rights. Some require an individual to petition for restoration. Some base re-enfranchisement on the crime.
In Connecticut, as long as the felon has completed his/her sentence and parole requirements he/she may register to vote and paid all ordered fines and restitution.
This means that the CONVICTED FELON Mayor Joseph Ganim of Bridgeport, who was sent to prison for stealing the taxpayers’ money and taking payoffs, was able to become an elector (registered voter) and then run for and win election as Mayor of Bridgeport.
In the 1950s and 60s Mayor Rado of Naugatuck was convicted and jailed for voter fraud twice. Each time after release and satisfaction of terms of his conviction, he got his vote back and the voters returned this felon to office.
If your states lets convicted felons vote and you oppose it, lobby your state legislators to change the law
@Joseph
Literacy Tests for voting rights were specifically made illegal in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, along with things such as the poll tax. These had been used to keep minorities from voting My father A”H used to keep his NYS Voter Registration Literacy Certificate (issued in the 1930s) framed on the wall in his office. I have it on display in my office nowThe law ought to require civics literacy in order to be a registered voter.
Should Rubashkin be allowed to vote?
To Joseph: I have read many of your posts in the Coffee Room. What makes you think that you could pass a literacy test?
Is a degree in higher education sufficient to demonstrate that to your satisfaction?
@Yehudayona
Should Rubashkin be allowed to vote?
He would NOT qualify in Connecticut, as he still has to make restitution and is on supervised release.
He may qualify in NY, the rules are a bit more lenient.What’s my opinion?
I have lobbied my state legislators to change the law to forbid granting voting rights to convicted felons.
I don’t care if they are Jews or GoyimA better question is whether Trump could pass a literacy test.
Who cares whether Rabbi Rubashkin votes. He’s being among us and his giving us chizuk is so much more important than voting.
Thank you President Trump!
I know it’s not a PC thing to say, but literacy requirements would likely stop a large portion of the Hasidic community from being able to vote.
I don’t think that what you said isn’t nice. They focus their literacy on Torah subjects, Loshon HaKodesh and Yiddish. So their not being as literate as most Americans in English, which to them is essentially a foreign language or at best a second language, is nothing to be embarrassed about. No more than students in Korea would be embarrassed at not being as literate in English.
The Satmar Rebbe zt’l, in the 1950s, when hiring an English principal for the Yeshiva told the new principal that if you teach the students X amount of secular studies then your salary is $8,000. But if you teach them more than X amount of secular studies then your salary is $7,000.
So while it is possibly true that such a test will, as you said, cause many to not be able to vote. It is still an overall good as it will eliminate millions and millions of idiot American dropouts on drugs and gangs from swinging elections to whoever promises them the most benefits by raising everyone else’s taxes.
By the way, what does “Ken ou lo” mean?
“By the way, what does “Ken ou lo” mean?”
Autocorrect for “Yes or No?”
Joseph, if there were some way of counting the number of “idiot American dropouts on drugs and gangs” who vote, I think the numbers would be quite small. As for “swinging elections to whoever promises them the most benefits by raising everyone else’s taxes,” I think you’d find a lot of such voters in Jewish neighborhoods. It seems that there are press releases (or quasi press releases) in YWN several times a week from Jewish politicians who are touting their work to provide benefits to their constituents, all of which are paid for with tax dollars. Who do you think pays for school vouchers?
“I don’t think that what you said isn’t nice.”
That’s a double negative maybe you need to go back to school.
There’s nothing wrong with a double negative as long as you don’t mistakenly say the wrong thing.
YY: Pork barrel politics is hardly unique to Jewish voters and politicians.
The Goq: It was intentionally said as a double negative.
Joe says that literacy in the English language shouldn’t be relevant to voting rights for the frum tzibur and they should be allowed to participte in selecting our public officials notwithstanding their inability to communicate in the English langauge and for many of them, making zero economic contribution to the economy. However, his hero, the Trumpkopf in Chief, has insisted we need to prioritize access to America to those who speak English, want to assimilate into our society and contribute to our economy. So I guess, Joe will be overjoyed if they start rounding up those in can’t speak English and refuse to work and start shipping them back to the Alte Heim so we can make room in Monsey,BP, Willy and Lakewood for some more productive Norwegians.
So it’s OK for Jews to swing elections to whoever promises them the most benefits by raising everyone else’s taxes, but it’s not OK for everyone else?
YY: No, it’s not okay for anyone. If we stop everyone from doing it, it will have been well worth giving up our own ability to do so.
That is why there are litvish people in the world!
Lightbrite, the Chasidim, who are our poor English speakers, have one of the best oiled (if not the best) political machine that is most respected and highly effective. Others envy them for this.
Depends. If its someone who did one dumb thing as a kid, fine. If it’s a guy who was arrested four times for assault, he has demonstrated that he cannot make reasonable decisions and should not be trusted to vote, just like a mentally ill person is incapable of making the decision of who to vote for. The problem is if you start a movement for any felon to be allowed to vote, the left will push for all felons to be allowed to vote and they will have another voting base.
When a whole raft of Republicans are convicted for the current Washington scandals, the GOP will be pushing for voting rights for felons.
Yehuda: Several GOP Congressman who were among the most strident opponents of voting rights for felons (which is primarily a STATE issue) are now themselves felons
Presumably Joseph thinks they were unjustly convicted.
One of the contenders for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator from West Virginia is coal executive Don Blankenship, who served a year in prison for his responsibility for a mine explosion that killed 29 miners. The mainstream GOP fears his insurgent candidacy will result in the nomination of an unelectable candidate.
Case by case basis. They are still subject to laws and taxes, so I think it is unfair to flatly deny them voting rights to control their own futures and money. However, some are not stable enough to make decisions on voting. If a guy got felony assault because someone punched him and he hit back, he is probably responsible enough to vote, because it was just a mistake he made. If someone was convicted of a felony because they stalked someone for a year and tried to kill them, that is not a person we can trust to make good decisions about our leadership.
that is not a person we can trust to make good decisions about our leadership.
That applies to a significant number of non-felons too. In fact, it includes about half of the people who voted in the last Presidential election.
In NY Ex-cons CAN vote. but not if they are on parole, they can only vote once their Parole is over.
In Maine and Vermont Prisonors have the right to vote
@ DovidBT
In my opinion, it includes the overwhelming majority of people who voted in the last Presidential election.
I haven’t read How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter, but some
of you may find it interesting. (The audio version is by a man with a nice voice.)(I realized that I might have made it sound as though
I’ve listened to the audio version, which I have not.)Though the origin (and accuracy of the second half) of the following is debated, it is one of my favorite quotes. I often wonder what this country would look like if only taxpayers could vote .
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence: From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.
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