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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34393 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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I write in favor of letting criminals vote. The main argument is that gatekeeping the franchise is not easy and requires a lot of state capacity to securely enforce it. Most of the world lets current and former criminals vote, and I generally don't find arguments to restrict it to be very convincing:

It's not that crazy, because the norm across the world is letting people vote from prison. Literally ballot boxes installed in prisons. To the extent there are any limitations imposed, they're doled out selectively, with apparently fewer than a handful of countries even considering restricting the vote of criminals post-release. In contrast, the United States is rather unique in its disenfranchisement zeal. Only Vermont, Maine, and DC allow voting from prison, but otherwise, the norm in most other states is automatic voting restoration upon release. In total, about 4.6 million Americans can't vote today because of a felony conviction, which is about triple the percentage it was in 1976, but down from a peak in 2016.

Despite all the words here, I'm actually not someone who particularly cares about democracy. While I can acknowledge the strong correlation between democratic governments and overall quality of life, I'm in the consequentialist camp on this issue. Give me Hong Kong under British colonial rule over democratic India any day of the week. Beyond that, voting is a waste of time on an individual level and not something I ever engage in (to answer the tiresome what if everyone thought that? retort: "Then I would vote"), and my anarchist foibles generally leave me politically stranded.

But my egalitarian foibles are why felony disenfranchisement bothers me. A steelman could be either consequential or an appeal to fairness. If you take a "wisdom of crowds" defense of democracy --- that it is a mechanism to arrive at better policies --- then perhaps giving former criminals a say would lead the ship astray. But most of the world seems to function OK despite letting criminals vote, and neither Vermont or Maine seem notably dysfunctional in any way (maybe DC does, but not sure how much you can pin that on the voting prison population). But even if consequences be damned, perhaps violating the social contract is cause enough to muzzle you. I concede it's a slightly stronger argument, but I'm not convinced the justification isn't used as a pretextual excuse to tip the scales in some political party's favor. This wouldn't be a novel effort, as Mississippi implemented literacy tests and poll taxes in 1890 with the express purpose of indirectly suppressing the black vote without explicitly violating the 15th Amendment. The state's governor, James Vardaman, said outright in 1903 the restrictions were imposed "for no other purpose than to eliminate the nigger from politics". Nowadays, nefarious motivations require a little more finesse. Good data on felon voting trends is hard to come by, but the obvious demographic skew (blacks are significantly more likely both to vote for Democrats and to have a felony record), combined with the energy in sustaining felony disenfranchisement coming almost exclusively from Republicans, is enough to sustain my suspicions that this is a pretextual exercise.

Beyond whether or not disenfranchisement is the right thing to do, there's also the question of implementation:

The next step further up --- restoration upon completion of supervision --- is where the difficulty really starts to ramp up. Unlike inmate rosters updated on the daily, when exactly someone's supervision ends is information that will be buried within reams of figurative dossiers in filing cabinets scattered across the state. There's nominally a system in place, such as the National Voting Rights Act, which allows different parts of the country to keep everyone up to date about voting registration. But I've written about how judicial record systems have to straddle an unenviable position: simultaneously maintaining an iron grip on legacy compatibility (imagine the nightmare of a computer upgrade wiping out entire convictions) while cracking the door just widely enough to allow cross-pollination with other systems.

Consider the situation in detail. Let's say that I, your favorite public defender, am able to track down a judgment & sentence order from the 1990s and find that my client was sentenced to X months in prison and Y months of supervision after release. I can't just plug that into a date calculator. First, I would need to know if this was the only charge they served time under, including, potentially, an extradition hold for a warrant from another jurisdiction. Then I'd need to track down whether any early release for good behavior applied to their charge, including noting any legislative changes that may have occurred and been retroactively applied. Even if I have a definitive release date, the length of supervised release is far less static. Maybe there was a court order that ended it early, or maybe there was a change in the law for that specific offense, or maybe their supervision time was tolled or extended for whatever reason by the probation authority. And so on. Despite what I do for a living, I have absolutely no confidence that I am able to accurately calculate the precise end of someone's supervision, and this is why I always leave that task to the math wizards at the Department of Corrections. I hope and pray to Allah they get it right, because there's no fucking way I'll know otherwise.

And beyond implementation by the state, there's also the question of how normal people are expected to navigate the cobwebs:

Pamela Moses' case in Tennessee illustrates how much of a bog this is even for experienced legal professionals. Moses was previously convicted of an evidence tampering felony, and in 2019, she tried to run for mayor. Election officials told her she was not eligible because she had not yet finished her probation. A court echoed what those officials said, but her probation officer later signed off on a certificate of restoration that Moses submitted when she registered. Moses was convicted of voter fraud and sentenced to six years in prison before her conviction was overturned on appeal. The probation officer was wrong about her probation term being over, but that wouldn't have mattered anyway because her predicate conviction --- evidence tampering --- was one of the few Tennessee offenses that led to permanent disenfranchisement. This was a fact that neither the probation officer, his supervisor, nor the trial judge knew about, as seen from page 24 of the trial transcript (cleaned up):

PROSECUTOR: The tampering with evidence we're addressing today, which is permanent. I don't remember all the ones. I know murder, probably rape ---

THE COURT: That's something I didn't know. Are you telling me if you get convicted of tampering with evidence, you can never vote? Where is that in the law?

DEFENSE: It's titled-- I think it's 39-15 or 39-17 where it talks about the interference with government operations. Those are ---

PROSECUTOR: It's 40-29-204.

THE COURT: "Those convicted after July 1, 1996, but before July 1, 2006 --- those convicted after July 1, 2006, any of the offenses set forth in one and two above, voter fraud, treason, murder in the first degree, aggravated rape." And then it goes on to say, "Any other violation of title 39 chapter 16 part one, four, and five, designated as a felony" --- so are you telling me I've got to go back and look at 39-16?

PROSECUTOR: Yes. Now you have to, and that's where the tampering with evidence, along with --- it falls under, like, bribery, contraband, false pretense, the ones that are felonies.

Apparently, it's impossible to wade through the cobwebs of cross-referencing statutory codes without tripping up somehow, even if wading boots are part of your job uniform. And absent malicious intent, these examples illustrate how easy it is for mistakes to happen. What purpose does punishing these types of mistakes accomplish? Focusing one's ire toward the people ensnared by the cobwebs doesn't do anything to get rid of the cobwebs. Getting rid of the cobwebs gets rid of the cobwebs.

And finally:

I’ve already made my position on felony disenfranchisement clear: I don’t think there should be any. If you believe otherwise, that’s fine, but the argument in favor needs to take into account the additional resources such a regime necessarily eats up. You need higher state capacity to check people’s convictions, calculate the terms of their sentence, and tabulate their LFOs, and an entire additional apparatus to investigate and prosecute scofflaws. Any argument in favor of disenfranchising felons has to explain why these additional costs are worthwhile.

"you should argue to understand, not to win" has been on my mind lately, especially with your comments. you have excellent comments showing wisdom and philanthropy but i think the latter is often your weakness. the comments addressing your points are hardly seeking understanding. still . . .

the policies of other countries, yes yes, in norway anders breivik hunger strikes for a new playstation. america would have hit him with a rock. ours is the better, and you said this isn't why, just as you said the "pretextual" knots you twist into aren't. you're flatly wrong to imply today's opposition to felons voting is from lingering racism. after all, those republicans are champions of policy that would see more black babies born. but you've said this isn't your motivation, i only mention them because:

egalitarian foibles

i feel this isn't the first time you've spun a whole essay from discomfort; that you're uncomfortable thinking you're better than anyone, even as you know so well how you are better than so many.

i am approximately christian. christian enough. i am not essentially better than any man, all fall short. i am practically better than most and the only discomfort i have is wishing others would be the same—by bettering them, not worsening myself. but this is transhuman promise (and transubstantial promise). not the mistaken belief they can be changed through simple policy of as-extant man.

you know the philosophy. serious crimes reject the social contract and that includes voting. thieves might serve enough time in prison to be absolved, but the criminals who destroy? no. we can hope released murderers have "done their time" and will not kill again, but a murderer stopped someone from voting forever. their permanent loss of that privilege is equality. traffickers and monstrous abusers? their voice is not equal to mine, and as my voice is worth one vote, theirs is worth none.

who's the worst person you went to court to defend? was it a murderer? you're better than them. the world doesn't slow because people know and act their station, it slows because people know and act their station while insisting it doesn't exist.

edited for clarity

This is quite an interesting comment and I appreciate the sentiment. I'm narcissistic enough that I'm not shy about acknowledging that I am practically better than most people, on most metrics. If I could pull a lever and have 535 of my clones take over Congress, I would struggle to think of a practical reason not to.

Egalitarianism can be thought of in different axes, and I don't have a ready non-arbitrary defense for why some axes are better than others. I don't think we should care about egalitarianism when we're designing spaceships or graduating doctors. And as I said about democracy, I also have no attachment towards egalitarian political decision-making. If I express discomfort in my post, it's primarily anchored in seeing a bargain reneged upon, and under dishonest circumstances. If we're propping up a system that says one-man/one-vote, we should mean it. If we're making exceptions to the rule, we should be transparent and honest about it.

Voting is primarily a means of electing people who decide how to allocate public funds. I don't see why individuals who live off the government, at great cost to the taxpayer (something like $100k/yr per inmate in California) should have any input into how other people's money is spent. Determining who has the "right" to vote should probably be rolled under the IRS' jurisdiction anyway, with a voter card sent out with your tax return. If a felon gets out of prison and makes enough money to actually pay taxes, then sure, let them vote, just like any other taxpayer.

There's a separate argument, one that I'm partial to, where franchise should be tied to your net tax contribution (and if you're at a deficit, with more benefits received than paid, then you get no vote until you make up the difference), but that's even further outside the overton window, so.

for the sake of argument, your first point could be applied to just about anyone who is a net drain on the economy, like old people, unhealthy people, or disabled people.

I think that would be a good thing, because it avoids the unproductive people of our society from voting for more resources to be allocated to them at the expense of everyone else.

The point of voting is to manage the myriad distinct interests of the whole population, which does in fact require people to vote for resources to be allocated to them at the expense of everyone else. If not directly in cash payments, then indirectly in public works projects that benefit their district, laws that benefit their industry, and the like. There's no nice clean law that exists up in heaven and is totally neutral between the whole population, certainly not any that is actually available to us lowly mortals here on Earth.

yes, but that in the end only ends with the wolves outvoting the sheep on what is for dinner.

I think in the current environment it’s tough to defend disenfranchising criminals. But it won’t happen in red states since they are viewed as likely D voters.

That being said I’m against giving the women the right vote and believe it’s largely been a net negative. Ok with letting females be in office. Largely I think women are too emotional and able to emotional manipulation and that’s lowered the voting quality of the electorate. Prime example is nuclear energy which has very wide male/female spreads. If women could not vote we would likely have cheap nuclear as our primary electricity supply. Emotional nuclear can be scary. Analytically it’s obviously great policy.

Seems a lot to pull from a single correlation.

Historically, its important to note most long-term felons would not be able to vote in any society, because they would have been executed or exiled.

I'm not sure what the import of what felons were historically able to do is -- historically most of any kind of person would not be able to vote, if anyone could vote at all.

I think I'm okay with letting some ex-cons vote if the crime committed wasn't too bad. Current prisoners: no, at least not for national elections. Maybe they can vote on some things only related to prisons. As for the bureaucracy, I think we should expand it. Federal ID can track whether or not you've been imprisoned before or not.

We can't let prisoners vote in local elections because there are counties where the prisoners outnumber residents.

Man, one of these days, I really need to get around to writing up an effort post and hopefully generating some discussion around the core, "what's the goal of voting?". Not that this hasn't been covered in quite a few venues, but it seems like it really gets directly to the heart of so many arguments around voting policy and procedure. I don't have all that strong of feelings on the felon vote, but including literal prisoners seems absolutely insane to me, because I don't regard the currently incarcerated as a legitimate constituency to appeal to and certainly see no need to include the wisdom of current prisoners as part of the selection process. The thing that keeps jumping out is that those aren't considerations that people arguing for a broader franchise agree with as top priorities - we're arguing from such different perspectives that there's no way we're going to agree.

Most of the world lets current and former criminals vote,

But most of the world seems to function OK despite letting criminals vote,

Among comparable countries, voter ID and mandatory registration are common, but considered by many to be immoral in the US.

I concede it's a slightly stronger argument, but I'm not convinced the justification isn't used as a pretextual excuse to tip the scales in some political party's favour. The state's governor, James Vardaman, said outright in 1903 the restrictions were imposed "for no other purpose than to eliminate the nigger from politics".

Reading the minds of today's political enemies by assigning them dimmest motives using more than a hundred year old example would disprove a lot more than merely felon disenfranchisement. It also an example of a genetic fallacy.

As for the bureaucracy point, any further restrictions (such as age or citizenship) than allowing any person that comes to the polls to vote, but purple-thumbing them, requires some sort of updatable database necessitating a state with a higher capacity than a mere bulk-purchaser of paper, and two kinds of ink.

Would be interesting to see if there is a correlation internationally between prisoner voting rights and demographic skew of the prison relative to the general population.

I'm in one such 'comparable' country, Australia, and voter ID is not mandatory (you don't need an ID to board a domestic flight either, which is nice).

One aspect in which the Australian political system is more unique, however, is the fact that everyone is obliged to vote in each federal, state, and local election. There are many benefits to this (overall it lowers the temperature and mitigates extremism while making mandates meaningful), but institutionally, one of the biggest is that the corrosive debate over who should be 'entitled' to vote does not exist. The vote should be sacralised to be beyond base, Machiavellian partisan machinations.

Reading the minds of today's political enemies by assigning them dimmest motives using more than a hundred year old example

Well it keeps happening:

Before enacting that law, the legislature requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices. Upon receipt of the race data, the General Assembly enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans. In response to claims that intentional racial discrimination animated its action, the State offered only meager justifications. Although the new provisions target African Americans with almost surgical precision, they constitute inapt remedies for the problems assertedly justifying them and, in fact, impose cures for problems that did not exist. Thus the asserted justifications cannot and do not conceal the State’s true motivation.

Well what keeps happening? Passing laws which disproportionately affect African Americans? There is long list of laws which disproportionately affect African Americans from laws against theft to laws against murder.

So are we to impute those laws were enacted for racist reasons? Or only if there is an anecdote from centuries ago of a person claiming the reason for enacting something similar is for racist reasons?

Well what keeps happening?

People keep trying to disenfranchise African Americans.

So are we to impute those laws were enacted for racist reasons?

There's no imputation required in this case - the disparate impact was very much by design.

How can you tell it was racist?

Because there is a disparate impact.

Why does disparate impact prove racism?

Because it was by design.

How can you tell it was racist?

Because disparate impact.

Did you pay any attention to the details of the case? Because this response makes me think you didn't and are just resorting to pattern matching against a strawman. The NC state government did not pass some facially neutral policy which had disparate impact:

the legislature requested data on the use, by race, of a number of voting practices. Upon receipt of the race data, the General Assembly enacted legislation that restricted voting and registration in five different ways, all of which disproportionately affected African Americans.

All this right after having a consent decree originally imposed for racist electoral policy lifted. The "golly gee, how did that happen" doesn't fly. If you ask for racial data and then immediately use it to enact policies which are de facto racially discriminatory, the most likely explanation is that it was deliberately discriminatory.

these aren't "details of the case," they're an argument

the NC state government explicitly passed a facially neutral policy which mentioned nothing about racial discrimination whatsoever

that's what "facially neutral" means

the response under VRA 1965 jurisprudence is that even though it's facially neutral, it's racially discriminatory because it was passed with racist intent because of the disparate impact of facially neutral laws

why? well a few judges in the 4th Cir declared the NC legislature is racist because they enacted outrageous voter laws like not allowing same day registration, requiring voter ID, and others which are already used around the USA (and still are to this day), because a member of the legislature requested data and the legislature passed the law after data was produced showing some of the restrictions would impact the way blacks vote more than nonblacks

Did you read this case or an article about it? If the later, why not link the article that you read instead of the case you didn't?

"The legislature" doesn't request data. Someone in the legislature did, according to some procedure, which is not set forth in the quoted section. Later in the opinion (pgs. 13-15) the language is changed to "legislators requested," which could mean that individual lawmakers asked for the data, but isn't dispositive. I do not know, but suspect, that the data would have been added to the record by progressives explicitly for the purpose of teeing up this challenge - it's not exactly a new position that the left regards Voter ID and anything but the most cursory controls on absentee- and early balloting as racist, nor is it a new charge that the GOP rejects this characterization and claims to support these policies on their own merits and for race-neutral reasons. This, obviously, would throw some water on the "those racists investigated just how they could screw over the blacks and then went and did it" narrative.

Moreover, the discontinuance of methods one group disproportionately uses is not evidence of discriminatory intent so long as adequate and facially race-neutral mechanisms of voting exist which are open to all. There is no general right to a long pre-election early-balloting window, whatever the color of one's skin, nor is there a requirement that outside organizations be allowed to do the thing that (likely) killed Edgar Allen Poe and conduct prospective voter cattle-drives. Nor is there a racial component to Voter ID requirements (provided that the Government also has race-neutral methods of distributing government-issued ID) - as has been stated many times, both here and many other places, just about every developed (and most developing) nations have some sort of Voter ID requirement, and do not regard the matter as particularly controversial.

Among comparable countries, voter ID and mandatory registration are common, but considered by many to be immoral in the US.

Maybe I'm thinking of something else, but who thinks mandatory registration is immoral? I don't think either policy is immoral, but I do question the utility of voter ID. I think the fears about voter suppression from requiring people to get an ID are severely overblown, but I can't say they're zero in a country where ID cards are not mandatory. Voter ID policy can only help mitigate against "impersonation fraud" (and not completely, since fake IDs exist) and I'm not sure how much of a problem that is. The effects one way or another seem slight, so I don't really have a strong opinion on voter ID.

Reading the minds of today's political enemies by assigning them dimmest motives using more than a hundred year old example would disprove a lot more than merely felon disenfranchisement. It also an example of a genetic fallacy.

That's not what I intended to communicate, all I said is that pretextual excuses have been used before to suppress the vote. Whether or not pretextual excuses are used now is a different analysis and I explained why I'm suspicious of some efforts.

Is anyone arguing disenfranchising people explicitly isn't suppressing the vote? It is by design suppressing the vote.

Your claim is then to undermine any argument in favor of banning felons from voting by saying there may be a pretextual reasons for the people advocating for it, but that criticism would be possible for the people arguing against it as well.

Because of that, it looks like you're just trying to smear people by association who argue for something similar as being racist because people in the past who passed the law said it was for racist reasons.

Is anyone arguing disenfranchising people explicitly isn't suppressing the vote?

Yes, I would. The question of "what are the criteria to be in the electorate" is prior to the question of suppression - i.e., whether qualified electors are being prevented from voting.

Fair enough. I would argue explicitly in favor of "suppressing the vote" as well as vastly reducing the number of people who are a qualified elector. To me this seems like splitting hairs to avoid the negative connotations of the phrase "suppressing the vote," but if that were a serious hurdle itself then there is no chance one gets to implementing it anyway.

The objection based on cost seems insincere, and an invented practical justification for a more ideological belief. This is like people that oppose the death penalty and cite the increased cost relative to life in prison. If perfectly tracking disenfranchisement was implemented at zero cost, would your opinion change? If the death penalty cost less than life, would death penalty opponents suddenly change their mind? I really doubt anyone is deciding this issue based on cost

What kind of insane country is run such that execution is more expensive than life in prison?

Guillotines exist. There are many guns in America. Killing people is not some complex technical feat. Any idiot can do it. Apparently the execution costs about $100,000 (4 orders of magnitude too high), the majority is legal fees and the costs of a higher security prison. These costs could be avoided if the legal niceties were bypassed. Given the cost of execution is ridiculous nonsense, I'm willing to be the legal niceties have a similar ratio of waste.

https://www.nbcrightnow.com/news/what-costs-more-the-death-penalty-or-life-in-prison/article_2d18f8a1-d1ce-5382-8bd6-15471a1b4194.html

China made a profit on its executions, harvesting organs at the same time. I fully expect someone to have an objection about the incentives of killing people for profit. But surely it's much more perverse for there to be a gigantic legal-bureaucratic-medical farce around the death penalty, squandering huge amounts of money.

If the death penalty cost less than life, would death penalty opponents suddenly change their mind? I really doubt anyone is deciding this issue based on cost

I can think the death penalty's financial costs are sufficient reason to oppose it without thinking they're a necessary reason. That is, in no way, "insincere".

I can think the death penalty's financial costs are sufficient reason to oppose it without thinking they're a necessary reason. That is, in no way, "insincere".

Except 99.99% of that cost is caused by opponents of the death penalty. So it is insincere, because its a "heads I win, tails you lose" argument.

Sounds like arguments as soldiers, tbh. But "insincere" is, if one doesn't also attempt to increase the cost of execution by suing to make cheap painless methods such as the firing squad illegal, inaccurate.

Suppose I thought my child should quit smoking to live longer. I might also believe they should quit smoking to save money. I can believe each of these reasons are sufficient to quit smoking. Finally, suppose I wrote letters to my senator urging for higher taxes on tobacco products.

There is no contradiction, hypocrisy, or insincerity here.

My child might dislike me for writing to my senator to enact a policy that will hurt their wallet, but they can hardly accuse me being contradictory, hypocritical, or insincere.

Humans are not ideal spherical cows.

If I managed to convince a death penalty opponent that the death penalty was in fact very economical, he wouldn't give up on his ideological reason. But if somehow he were to lose the ideological reason, he'd automatically discard the economics reason. Pretty much nobody (short of the lizardman constant) would actually care about the economics reason on its own, so trying to refute it is pointless.

Yes, it's logically possible. But nobody (again, short of the lizardman constant) actually behaves that way. And the answer to "do people in real life behave that way" can be different for smoking and for the death penalty (especially since it's common to object to other things, like rolls in gacha games, that are expensive but don't cause cancer.)

But if somehow he were to lose the ideological reason, he'd automatically discard the economics reason.

I doubt it. The economics reason is pretty rock solid for me, and I don't feel any particular ideological attachment to not executing, say, Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy (beyond, perhaps, that they plead guilty and so spared everybody the rigamarole of their trial).

There's no appropriate, just way to do executions more cheaply - if you speed up the process to cut down the legal fees, you also greatly increase the unconscionable possibility of an innocent man being executed for a crime he didn't commit.

There's no appropriate, just way to do executions more cheaply

That's a moral reason disguised as an economics reason. You're not denying it can be done cheaply, but that it can be done cheaply and morally.

I don't doubt that insincere objections exist, but why do you suspect I'm guilty of that here? If perfectly tracking disenfranchisement was implemented at zero then yes I would change my mind. I would still question why people should lose the right to vote but as I said I don't really care about voting in general, and at least in your hypothetical scenario we wouldn't be burning up resources for what to me seems to be a pointless endeavor.

In my opinion, we should be limiting the franchise, not expanding it. Expanding it does not lead to improved outcomes, it only dilutes the votes of people who would make good judgements on which politicians we should be electing. Criminals, especially felons, have notoriously bad judgement. Why should we want their input on governing our society?

This seems to be based on an assumption that voter's judgement has a significant impact on the politicians the US winds up electing, which strikes me as unproven and not at all obviously true, considering the extreme filtering effect of money, inside baseball in the nominating parties, and primaries. There's an alternative model which I find more plausible to represent reality, which is that quality of candidates is almost entirely determined by these other processes, and the final voting only serves to shift the incentive gradient that the politicians who get into positions of power either way will have to follow. That is to say, to a coarse approximation, letting the smartest 10% vote would result in the same politicians getting into power, but they now would only have to make the smartest 10% happy; conversely, expanding the franchise to felons would result in the same politicians getting into power, but now they would also have to consider making felons happy to the same extent as they do for the average mediocre and uninfluential free citizen. It does not seem to me that the bad judgement of felons is a relevant counterargument in the latter scenario.

How would you feel about a politician who agreed with you in principal but was able to enact legislation that included you among the disenfranchised? I don't know your personal history but one could presumably construct some sort of schema whereby it's presumed that your judgment would be worse than those who are given the franchise.

I'm Latino. I'd support a politician that wanted to take away the Hispanic franchise, because my fellow Latinos tend to vote for socialism at a much higher rate than Anglos.

I feel like any legislation that disenfranchises me at this point in my life is not in line with my principles.

But, in principle, if I were to fall into a category of drains on society, yeah, my opinion should be disregarded.

I'm young and probably not a net contributor to taxes yet. I would gladly have my franchise taken away if it meant that people like me (who overwhelmingly vote the opposite way I do) could not vote anymore. Based on those characteristics, it is perfectly correct to presume that my judgement would be worse than, say, net taxpayers.

Yes, I already acknowledged this as an argument for restricting the franchise but my point here is that you should also justify the increased bureaucracy costs. Do you think it's worthwhile?

One thing I didn't touch upon is that it seems like a good policy to let ex-felons vote at least as a way to encourage them to be part of civil society again. Disenfranchising them seems like it would encourage them to just check out completely.

Yes, I already acknowledged this as an argument for restricting the franchise but my point here is that you should also justify the increased bureaucracy costs. Do you think it's worthwhile?

What increased bureaucratic costs? We already know who is married, who has kids, who own property, who pays more taxes than they accept in government aid.

Wouldn’t you need to balance that out with cheaper elections (since there are less votes)? Also perhaps GOTV apparatuses would be smaller if the vote was held by a smaller percentage of the population. If people behind gotv could do something productive, that would be a net win.

Running elections seems to come with high fixed costs and low marginal costs, so it doesn't seem likely that additional votes would materially increase costs. Throwing additional votes into the tabulation machinery seems way cheaper than having real life bureaucrats carefully scrutinizing individual registrations as I outlined in my examples.

The cost of running elections is negligible... how many $10 million miles of highway would we need to give up? Not many.

Campaigning though isn’t low marginal costs.

It is if the marginal campaign dollar is going on paid media (which, in America, it probably is)

I'm not sure exactly why you think it would be so expensive to restrict the franchise. Why can't you just give voter IDs out like driver's licenses to those who tick the correct boxes. The less people allowed to vote, the cheaper that is.

encourage them to be part of civil society again

Felons are not anywhere near as civic-minded as you think they are.

I'm not sure exactly why you think it would be so expensive to restrict the franchise.

I wrote my reasons in detail, did you miss that above?

Sometimes there are difficult cases. How many of them are there and how expensive are they? "Voting can be hard to figure out for some felons, if they're banned" is probably true, but how many felons aren't bothering to try and register in the first place? If felons are allowed to vote, how much is spent on getting them registered and tabulating their votes?

The more people you can cut with general rules (e.g. only landowning married men can vote), the less expensive dealing with edge cases becomes.

but how many felons aren't bothering to try and register in the first place?

If Florida is any indication, about 10% of the adult population has a felony record and unable to vote and few (~100k?) have bothered to register to vote. This tends to be true in most states that have post-release disenfranchisement, unless restoration is automatic, few people bother trying. Running elections seems to come with high fixed costs and low marginal costs, so it doesn't seem likely that additional votes would materially increase costs.

The more people you can cut with general rules (e.g. only landowning married men can vote), the less expensive dealing with edge cases becomes.

I would agree there's likely a "reverse Laffer curve" where increasingly high disenfranchisement gets progressively cheaper, but I don't see your argument for where we are currently on the curve. If cost was your only concern then you could justify getting rid of voting entirely.

Cost is a minor concern overall, but I was arguing that more people voting in general is more expensive, not the other way around.

Poor judgment about crime doesn’t have to mean poor judgment about people. Drunk drivers are a blight upon society. They also haven’t proven anything about their grasp of macroeconomics or foreign policy.

Either way, the most valuable boon of democracy is not wisdom of the crowds, but consent of the governed. The pressure release valve of getting to go vote rather than go pogrom. Why is it a good idea to take more away from those who allegedly have paid their debts to society?

Either way, the most valuable boon of democracy is not wisdom of the crowds, but consent of the governed

Right, but we get consent of the governed who matter by including them in the electorate. Broadly, the electorate should reflect people with some influence and good judgement.

Poor judgment about crime doesn’t have to mean poor judgment about people.

There is a hypothesis called Multiple Intelligences Hypothesis, which postulates the existence of several orthogonal kinds of intellect. A competing one claims there exists a "G Factor" aka "Everything is Correlated" with remaining PC's being negligable. One could, by analogy, establish two hypotheses of judgement.

but consent of the governed.

Laws of a country apply to everyone on its teritorry, but only adult citizen are usually permitted to vote. So being "governed" doesn't require one to "consent" (which you define as voting).

Why is it a good idea to take more away from those who allegedly have paid their debts to society?

If they are still banned from voting, society has apparently deemed the debt to not yet been repaid in full.

I don’t really buy into multiple intelligences, as g seems to do pretty well, but that’s not necessary. Making the correct assessment on “What’s the risk-benefit on selling drugs/embezzling/assault?” is just poorly correlated with being right about “is voting X good for the country/community/me?” Partly because political strategy is a hard problem for anyone, and I don’t think non-felons do a great job either. Partly because of the layers of insulation between a voter and any policy.

consent of the governed

Currently, “citizen” has a pretty expansive definition, and those who are governed without it are the exception rather than the rule. Children are the biggest one, restricted under the same strict scrutiny that we apply to all the other ways we don’t let them consent. Immigrants are the other big contingent; I don’t really have a problem with requiring their submission to government. I consider it another prerequisite to actually naturalizing and getting the full rights.

not repaid in full

Is this a reasonable expectation? It strikes me as perverse to have “...and permanent suspension of your voting rights” silently tacked on to all sentences in states with such laws. When sentencing guidelines are set, I don’t think voting rights get much consideration compared to the deprivation of physical liberty. In that sense, completing the prison time would be reasonably interpreted as paying the debt.

I would prefer to have slightly longer sentences in exchange for removing this afterthought of an indefinite punishment.

Making the correct assessment on “What’s the risk-benefit on selling drugs/embezzling/assault?” is just poorly correlated with being right about “is voting X good for the country/community/me?”

I don't think it's about having the intelligence to figure out the best policy for the country. I think it's about whose interest you're voting for. Criminals will vote for policies that benefit themselves. I would rather not optimize society for criminals. So it makes sense to me to do everything practical to exclude them from voting. I think we're better off when politicians don't have to pander for the support of murderers, rapists and drug dealers.

Maine and Vermont let people vote from prison. Do you have any evidence that this leads to bad policies being implemented?

Maine and Vermont have certain other characteristics that result in them being pleasant places.

Felons vote for the Democrats something like 2-1 and I believe most of the Democrats' policy positions are bad and also mostly beneficial to criminals and the criminal-adjacent (bloated welfare state, racial spoils system, defund the police, soft on crime). So yeah, I believe that Maine and Vermont will have marginally worse policies because they allow felons to vote than they otherwise would. If you believe that left wing policies are good then you will disagree but there's no way to resolve that argument.

Murderers wouldn't vote to make murder legal, because they know very well that they could be the victim of murder by someone else. (They might vote to make murder legal only if done by themselves and not by anyone else, but laws like that aren't on the table.) And if a crime is victimless, I'd be fine with letting criminals vote to legalize it. There may be edge cases (a vagrant who doesn't own property may want to make sleeping on someone's property legal) but I doubt that such things would be seriously proposed as laws anyway.

They might not vote to make murder legal, but they'll very plausibly vote for things like eliminating cash bail, defunding the police, making punishments more lenient and expanding the welfare state.

Because it's their right. I believe everyone has a fundamental right to get input into how society is run, regardless of how poor their judgement is. Frankly, I don't trust a felon's judgement much less than that of the American electorate in general, which is incredibly poor. But I think the general public (poor as their judgement is) still deserves their right to vote, and so too do convicted criminals.

And from a standpoint of outcomes, I think you also need to consider the consequentialist argument for liberalism in general. When you abridge the rights of anyone, it makes it easier (and more likely) to abridge the rights of everyone. Therefore you have to very narrowly tailor how and when you abridge rights. I'm not convinced that keeping criminals from voting actually gives us a better outcome.

I believe everyone has a fundamental right to get input into how society is run, regardless of how poor their judgement is

This statement implies children should be allowed to vote

I believe everyone has a fundamental right to get input into how society is run, regardless of how poor their judgement is.

Why?

Because it's their right.

Do you support minimum voting age? If so, it's easy enough to get from there to restricting the rights of mentally challenged, criminals, welfare recipients, women, etc.

Mentally-challenged, I'll grant you. You're going to have a harder time selling on welfare recipients and women.

We accept disenfranchisement of children because they are dependents. They are not responsible for making any decisions governing their own lives, so it seems natural they wouldn't make any decisions about their government.

The reason it's reasonable for dependents to not make decisions is because they don't pay the cost for those decisions. They will therefore err on the side of too much cost. It's not that they just don't have money or whatever, they actually just have no idea what cost is, whether monetary or through work.

  • Children - not responsible for themselves in any capacity

  • Mentally challenged - same

  • Welfare recipients - same, arguably they are responsible for feeding/housing/clothing themselves within a budget, but they get the money for those things for free. See no benefit if the government spends less.

  • Women - same, but a bit different. While some ladies are independent heads of households, overall they are ultimately not responsible for maintaining civilization and as such would not be held responsible if SHTF. If men stop going to work, huge problem. Ladies mad. If women stop going to work, small problem for a short period of time, nobody mad.

A) 46.6% of the workforce is women, so it's not "some ladies are independent heads of households" it's "women are independent heads of households at almost the same rate as men."

B) "Not responsible for maintaining civilization" is a vague assertion. Who isn't holding them responsible? You? Because that means nothing.

C) "If men stop going to work, huge problem. Ladies mad." It would be a huge problem. I'm not sure why "ladies", in particular, would be angrier about the situation than any other group.

D) "If women stop going to work, small problem..." - No. It would not be a small problem. If 46.6% of your workforce decides not to work, that is not a small problem. If it's also ~75% of your healthcare workers, that is an absolutely enormous problem.

E) "...nobody mad." Of the people I know, none of them would be angry if a large group of people stopped working. They would be concerned. If they were angry, they would be no less angry about women leaving the workforce than men.

Every part of that statement was wrong in a number of different ways.

A) Having a job is not the same as being independent or the head of the household. About a third of dual income couples have the woman making more. According to that article the most common cases are where the husband is a bartender, barber, kindergarten teacher or waiter. My hunch is that most of these cases are women out-earning their partners by a small amount, given that this arrangement is way likely to end in divorce. So while it is true that a sizeable fraction of women are breadwinners, it is not nearly the same rate as men and they are way more likely to get divorced (i.e. are unhappy). I should mention single moms here as well, but what percentage of the independent ones (i.e. not on child support, welfare) are happy with their arrangement and not seeking a man who makes more than them?

B) It is vague but it does mean something in a couple ways. Most simply, women are holding them responsible. Sort of like how a bachelor's house and a married couple's house looks way different, a large amount of civilizing pressure comes from women. There's also the situation on the ground. Ladies are heavily concentrated in some industries, but there aren't many that I would call staples of "civilization". Between resource extraction, the energy, utilities, manufacturing, shipping, agriculture, none have a sizeable fraction of women handling any core responsibilities. Finally, there is the historical precedent. Through antiquity, if the men of a tribe grew weaker than another tribe, they would be killed. The women would be absorbed into the stronger tribe.

C) If a man just stops going to work, his lady would be very mad in pretty much all cases. The reverse is not true nearly as often. Generalize this and women are upset on a level that men just aren't.

D) Like B, the workforce is concentrated in less essential areas. Again there is historical precedent. Before WWII about 20% of women were working, mostly young ones and in low level jobs. This seemed to work fine. Same to say those jobs could be absorbed by men if they had to.

E) The rates of depression and general malaise among ladies along with plummeting fertility rates makes me think that the current arrangement isn't all it's cracked up to be. Women are in a prisoner's dilemma. Each individual is usually worse off if they don't work, but collectively they are worse off all working. If they all quit, SSRI use would drop in a hurry.

A) Having a job is not the same as being independent or the head of the household. About a third of dual income couples have the woman making more. According to that article the most common cases are where the husband is a bartender, barber, kindergarten teacher or waiter. My hunch is that most of these cases are women out-earning their partners by a small amount, given that this arrangement is way likely to end in divorce. So while it is true that a sizeable fraction of women are breadwinners, it is not nearly the same rate as men and they are way more likely to get divorced (i.e. are unhappy). I should mention single moms here as well, but what percentage of the independent ones (i.e. not on child support, welfare) are happy with their arrangement and not seeking a man who makes more than them?

Women make less in general, I agree. But you're excluding single women, single moms, lesbians and basically anyone who isn't in a traditional nuclear family, then adding the requirement that they be happy, have no outside income (no disability, welfare or child support), and... not be looking for a relationship?

I don't any hard numbers on how many men fail the "independence" requirements that you've laid out here, but I would guess it's a lot. I've met a lot of men who are in unhappy marriages, a lot of men who are single and looking for a relationship, and an enormous number of men that are on disability.

B) It is vague but it does mean something in a couple ways. Most simply, women are holding them responsible. Sort of like how a bachelor's house and a married couple's house looks way different, a large amount of civilizing pressure comes from women. There's also the situation on the ground. Ladies are heavily concentrated in some industries, but there aren't many that I would call staples of "civilization". Between resource extraction, the energy, utilities, manufacturing, shipping, agriculture, none have a sizeable fraction of women handling any core responsibilities. Finally, there is the historical precedent. Through antiquity, if the men of a tribe grew weaker than another tribe, they would be killed. The women would be absorbed into the stronger tribe.

Yeah, maybe we should take a poll. Because I've never met a woman that "held men responsible for civilization." I would guess this is something unique to your social circle. So basically, no offense- but I don't believe you.

C) If a man just stops going to work, his lady would be very mad in pretty much all cases. The reverse is not true nearly as often. Generalize this and women are upset on a level that men just aren't.

Again, I just don't believe you. I'm 35 years old. I've lived in a lot of different places and met a lot of different people- if a person is in a relationship and their significant other decides to quit with no discussion, then the non-quitting partner would almost universally be angry. If they quit with discussion, then the anger would depend on the reasons.

D) Like B, the workforce is concentrated in less essential areas. Again there is historical precedent. Before WWII about 20% of women were working, mostly young ones and in low level jobs. This seemed to work fine. Same to say those jobs could be absorbed by men if they had to.

If you want to argue that men leaving the workforce would be worse than women leaving the workforce, then I would agree. But originally, you stated that it would be a "small problem". By any measure, 75% of your healthcare workers quitting would be an enormous problem. The education system is dominated, top to bottom, by women. Banks are run by women. This isn't pre-WWII anymore, and there are lots of jobs that aren't agricultural or construction-related that we need workers in.

E) The rates of depression and general malaise among ladies along with plummeting fertility rates makes me think that the current arrangement isn't all it's cracked up to be. Women are in a prisoner's dilemma. Each individual is usually worse off if they don't work, but collectively they are worse off all working. If they all quit, SSRI use would drop in a hurry.

Speculation, and also (as with the happiness requirement in A) beside the point.

Expanding it does not lead to improved outcomes

Improved outcomes for whom? Politics is about competing interests; there are very few issues on which there is a single "common good," and even fewer where that common good is knowable. Saying that "group X should not be allowed to vote" is saying that group X's interests do not matter. And, although as a person who is both more highly educated and better read than the average person, I might know a lot more about a lot of things than most people, but I almost certainly know less than they do about what their interests are.

I'm comfortable saying as a matter of policy that serious enough crimes have you constructively banished from society. Since we lack the capability to actually cast people out into the wilderness or deport them to the unsettled frontier, we do this by declaring their interests to not matter to the rest of society. They are free to remove themselves if they don't like it.

Whom do you think worthy of the vote and how do you propose we find these people?

Net taxpayers. You must pay more than $X in tax more than you receive via government subsidy.

Most of the world, historically, limited the franchise to landowning men- that is, heads of established households. And that’s probably a pretty good filter for not being a total train wreck.

I would suggest that ‘no criminal record, over 21, employed or married’ would fill a similar function today.

I keep toying with the idea of having to post a bond of some substantial value that is forfeit if the voter leaves their legislative district before some term of years. Potentially allowing for rolling it election to election instead of continually posting a new one each term unless someone wanted the flexibility. Maybe making the bond cost progressive. The whole having skin in the game effect since people seem so allergic to restricting the franchise to landowners.

That would restrict voting to the rich, since poor people couldn't afford the risk. That would also mean that the government could hurt people and they wouldn't be able to leave to escape without paying the government off.

Poor people already significantly do not vote compared to rich. Although realistically there should be some nontrivial cost floor. Paul voting whether or not Peter should be robbed to pay for Paul has some issues. The franchise being conditioned on the bond does not stop poor people from leaving, only those who voted for that same government in the first place who cannot bear the cost. And a progressive cost on the bond would mean that it would be proportionally costly for rich and poor.

Most of the world, historically, limited the franchise to landowning men- that is, heads of established households.

Most of the world, historically, limited the franchise to the aristocracy if they had voting at all. I'm not sure what "established" household means but prior to the Reform Acts in the mid 19th century the franchise in Britain was extremely limited - far more so than just married, non-lumpen men.

Western societies historically had some means of franchise available for (adult, male)full members. Rome and Greece famously spent a lot of time as republics, the ancient germanics allowed landowning men to sit in the thing, etc.

The ancien regime in France was the exception, not the rule. Most western societies had legislative bodies elected by commoners(although often with property requirements).

What metric do you consider to determine whether your voting filter is a good idea? The fact that a system was used historically doesn't tell us about its merits.

To clarify, men only or women as well?

Men and women- it fills the same function as previous laws restricting voting to established persons who contribute to society.

One more question, if you don't mind. How strict are we talking for no criminal record? Squeaky clean down to zero moving or parking violations or do we allow a certain amount of flexibility for misdemeanors? I'm not poking at you, I'm just genuinely curious about your ideas on this.

To be clear this entire exercise is just spitballing ideas to mirror a historical ‘full membership’ requirement, but I’d imagine ‘nothing other than minor violations/period of years since last violation’ both make sense here.

Citations should be fine (eg speeding, parking ticket, etc). Misdemeanor maybe ten year window? Felon forever.

Apparently, it's impossible to wade through the cobwebs of cross-referencing statutory codes without tripping up somehow, even if wading boots are part of your job uniform. And absent malicious intent, these examples illustrate how easy it is for mistakes to happen. What purpose does punishing these types of mistakes accomplish?

I largely agree with your overall point, but I want to have a stab at this. I assume it's rhetorical, but obviously, for the lay people: this is the whole point of law in the first place. Honest free men can't be coerced as easily as criminals can. When everything is potentially criminal, government has achieved normality and can focus on fighting over who gets to selectively enforce which laws. This is why we have a legal profession, because if laws were easy enough for the people who are supposed to be following them to understand, it wouldn't be necessary.

This quote of yours is damning, and true, but it's true of every law. It's a fully generalizable argument, because law is designed, intended and implemented to be impenetrable and to criminalize as much as possible.

I don't disagree that this is a risk, but I would pushback on how generalizable it is. Almost all my criminal caseload involves acts that are unambiguously wrong (dude stabs a guy, man shoots a gun, woman shoplifts, etc.) where the accused is not at all surprised that they're being charged with a crime. Granted, edge cases exist (esp. self-defense) but I don't think every law can be accused of being impenetrable to the common person.

Only because in the main, the legal force of the law is enforced in ways that accord with the public morality. This is what gives it "legitimacy". You know as well as I that if all the laws on all the books were enforced equally and to the full extent, the government would fall tomorrow. It is only by not enforcing the vast majority of the law (which criminalizes the entire population) that the powerful can selectively choose the exceptions to that rule. The unlucky few to get charged with some obscure statute that gets used once a decade or so. It's a handy tool to have, deciding who is a criminal and who isn't based on your own personal (and influenced/lobbied/payed etc.) opinion.

If everything were in fact potentially criminal, I don't think you'd be able to judge the effects of that by surveying your caseload, or even all the caseloads in the country. Arcane self-defense laws, for example, probably have a chilling effect. Someone might avoid moving to a rough neighborhood for fear that they can't defend themselves reasonably, or decide against buying a gun for self-defense for fear of the consequences of using it, or hesitate to shoot an armed burglar or robber for fear of going to prison. So the rough neighborhood gets rougher because upstanding citizens avoid it, and the burglary victim is harmed financially or even physically because of their inability to trust that the law would be on their side. And you'd never hear about it.

If "rough neighborhood" means a rough part of a generally functioning city, then the unanimous view of people-who-are-not-Americans is that cleaning it up is a job for the police, not for armed gentrifiers. If the neighborhood is so bad that even the police won't go there then

  1. You are probably in Sweden and your problem is immigration policy (and housing policy as well, as far as I can see), not self defense law

  2. Sane people are not going to move into the neighborhood because "It is okay if I get mugged, the law lets me defend myself."

This is what leaves me conflicted on the matter of felony disenfranchisement, really.

On principle, I'm against it, because I see the potential for it to be abused. "Quick, in this moment while we have control of the legislature and a friendly judiciary, let us render felonious some behavior that is characteristic of the other tribe so they can never vote again!" Now, of course, that's really unlikely to happen in that way, and if that ever becomes possible, surely we have bigger problems, but I still don't like leaving doors open to tyranny.

But. As you point out, it's not as though the current population of disenfranchised felons has a major number of otherwise-innocents who are just being persecuted in this way; instead, if your experience is generalizable, "almost all" have executed uncontestedly bad judgment, and if ever it is possible for somebody to have forfeited the power to vote, it's not like our current system is wildly missing the mark.

Now, the principle is still probably the deciding factor to me, but I cannot pretend that the short- or medium-term effects of abiding by it would be good. But hey, nothing says life cannot dish out no-win scenarios.

On principle, I'm against it, because I see the potential for it to be abused. "Quick, in this moment while we have control of the legislature and a friendly judiciary, let us render felonious some behavior that is characteristic of the other tribe so they can never vote again!" Now, of course, that's really unlikely to happen in that way, and if that ever becomes possible, surely we have bigger problems, but I still don't like leaving doors open to tyranny.

While I'm very sympathetic to this view, recent Red/Blue tribal warring has begun to convince me that there's really no legal safeguard, check, or balance you can implement that can prevent abuse of one tribe by another if there's sufficient tribal hatred and insufficient faith in our system of laws and government. It might stall the abuse for a time, but that time is probably a lot shorter than I previously imagined. And so any potential benefits of banning felons from voting ought not to be weighed against the potential for that ban to be used as a political weapon. Because in an ugly tribal conflict almost anything can and will be used as a political weapon.

As you point out, it's not as though the current population of disenfranchised felons has a major number of otherwise-innocents who are just being persecuted in this way

There's a way to steelman the opposing view. A lot of the distinction between felony and misdemeanor seems arbitrary to me and the best example is DUI. I think driving drunk evinces horrifically bad judgment, especially if you do it multiple times, but in almost every state you have to get caught drunk driving at least 4 times within a given time period before it can count as a felony. The jail penalties ramp up, as do the collateral consequences (losing driver's licence, etc), but it's notable how reluctant state legislatures are in just declaring DUIs to be a felony. I think the reason why is because DUIs are by far the most "intersectional" of crimes in that almost any slice of the population is liable to trip up and get one. Because of that, they keep the misdemeanor gloves on.

There are also a bunch of edge cases. I once had a guy get charged with burglary (felony) because he stole one can of red bull from a walmart. Normally that would just be misdemeanor shoplifting, but it got upgraded to burglary because he already had a trespass order against him (burglary = intent to commit a crime + entering without permission, prosecutor dropped the charges because prosecuting a felony over $3 was not worth it to anyone). Similarly, I had a client who pawned off jewelry given to her by her boyfriend. Months later, boyfriends beats the shit out of my client and she reports it to the police. Literally the same day, the boyfriend's mom files a police report claiming that the jewelry my client pawned off was stolen. The value was something like $70, which assuming the mom wasn't lying would be just petty theft, but because my client pawned it she got hit by trafficking stolen property felony. [fyi I got her charges dropped once I showed the prosecutor the timing indicated the mom's police report was retaliatory]

Another thing to consider is how nominally neutral laws can still be enforced in a biased and targeted manner. The difference in jail time between a misdemeanor and a low-level felony for a first time offender is almost non-existent. But the collateral consequences of a felony conviction are severe. People lose gun rights and voting rights, and in some places they're also categorically prohibited from pursuing entire professions and, less formally, makes it difficult to find housing and employment. Felony convictions are a modern day legal vehicle used to stuff a bunch of collateral punishments on people. If you don't like someone, just find a way to peg them with a felony and you've virtually guaranteed their pariah status for life on a whole host of issues, not just voting.

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