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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   Edited 1yr ago   34374 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.

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?

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.

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.

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