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Notes -
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:
Beyond whether or not disenfranchisement is the right thing to do, there's also the question of implementation:
And beyond implementation by the state, there's also the question of how normal people are expected to navigate the cobwebs:
And finally:
Among comparable countries, voter ID and mandatory registration are common, but considered by many to be immoral in the US.
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.
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