Electioneering : Should Felons be Allowed to Vote?

This article, “In Alabama, a Fight to Regain Voting Rights Some Felons Never Lost,” is simply rank with issues that often don’t want to be talked about. Should felons be allowed to vote? Officials in Alabama are having a hard time with this questions — even if the law states that some should.Because of a quirk in its Constitution, Alabama disqualifies from voting only those who have committed a “felony involving moral turpitude.”

Even though some felons are able to vote, the regulatory bodies are still not interested in publicizing this fact. There isn’t even a list to say what crimes constitute a “felony involving moral turpitude.” It’s all up for interpretation.

In theory, one would think we should encourage members of the prison system and ex-cons to vote, shouldn’t we? Doesn’t voting mean that these Americans are taking an interest in their society and attempting to control their fate? (however far fetched that idea might be, of course) I know that there are a number of issues in play, but keeping an enormous section of the population from participating in this process seems to be a grave mistake.

“There’s no more anti-Republican bill than this,” said Marty Connors, the chairman of the state Republican Party, according to news reports at the time. “As frank as I can be, we’re opposed to it because felons don’t tend to vote Republican.”

Nationally, 5.3 million people are barred from voting because of their criminal history, according to a 2004 estimate cited by the Sentencing Project, a criminal justice policy group.