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It's A Crime To Stop Felons From Voting by Sheryl McCarthy of New York Newsday
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posted Wednesday, 16 November 2005
Originally published June 16, 2005 @ http://tabacco.myblogsite.com/
It's A Crime To Stop Felons From Voting by Sheryl McCarthy
of New York Newsday
NEW YORK NEWSDAY
Sheryl McCarthy
Editorials
It's a crime to stop felons from voting
June 16, 2005
Joseph Hayden and Jalil Abdul Muntaqim aren't the most sympathetic guys in the world. Hayden served 13 years in New York prisons for killing a man during an argument in Harlem in 1986. Released three years ago, he'll be on parole until 2007.
Muntaqim was convicted of shooting two police officers in the 1970s, when he belonged to the Black Liberation Army. He's doing life in an upstate prison and probably will never get out.
Both are plaintiffs in a case to be argued before a federal appeals court this month challenging New York's felon disenfranchisement law. And while until now I've been skeptical about the call to repeal such laws, I've changed my mind.
New York's election law bars Hayden from voting until he gets off parole, and essentially says that Muntaqim will never cast a vote in this state. There's been growing criticism of such laws since the 2000 presidential election, when one of the many flukes of the Florida election was that hundreds of thousands of felons who had completed their sentences were barred from voting.
Laws like those in Florida and Alabama, which bar felons from voting for life, are clearly excessive. New York's is less so, but there are still arguments against it. First, that voting is not a privilege, but a right guaranteed by the Constitution, and states don't have the right to take it away, even from someone like Muntaqim. Second, that such laws are doubly unfair to communities of color, which are treated more harshly and often unfairly by the criminal justice system, and then have their voting power diluted because they have a larger proportion of felons.
Third, the history of felony disenfranchisement laws stinks. In the South they were enacted to keep blacks from voting. Other laws made harmless acts like quitting a job, being unemployed or simply congregating, into felonies, which allowed blacks to be arrested, convicted and stripped of their right to vote. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, whose lawyers are representing Hayden and Muntaqim, disenfranchising blacks was one of the motivations behind passing New York's law in 1821.
But the most convincing argument against these laws is this one: What purpose do they serve?
"What does it accomplish?" asks Frances Fox Piven, a professor at the City University of New York's graduate school and an expert on American voting habits. "It's certainly not an effective form of punishment, since a lot of people don't have that kind of faith and love for the right to vote. So there's nothing to be lost, and maybe something to be gained, by making the right to vote universal."
She also doesn't "see the point of depriving these people of the right to express their opinion."
And isn't that what voting is? So what are we afraid will happen if inmates and former inmates get the vote? That they'll try to elect other criminals to office? That they'll vote for legislators who want to water down the criminal laws and create statutes of limitations for murder? Clearly none of this is going to happen. In Maine and Vermont, where prison inmates vote by absentee ballot, nothing horrible has happened as a result.
I know there are people who say if you do the crime, then you deserve to lose all your rights. But these are the same folks who think prison inmates should be denied college courses - even though education helps them stay straight once they get out. Following elections and voting in them is probably good practice for inmates in being good citizens, which benefits all of us in the long run.
About 131,000 New Yorkers can't vote because of the felon disenfranchisement law. Nationwide, it's close to 5 million. It's time to get rid of these laws, for the primary reason that they serve no good purpose.
Sheryl McCarthy's e-mail address is mccart731@aol.com
Newsday website:
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-opmcc164305834jun16,0,7264090.column?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
Subscribe to Newsday home delivery | Article licensing and reprint options
...............................................................................................................................................................................
Republished here by
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization)
Tabacco's own comment:
If she weren’t about half my age, I would swear we were twins, separated at birth. Sheryl McCarthy gets it right so often, it’s scary. She doesn’t just hit the nail on the head, she hits all the nails!
It's A Crime To Stop Felons From Voting by Sheryl McCarthy
of New York Newsday
NEW YORK NEWSDAY
Sheryl McCarthy
Editorials
It's a crime to stop felons from voting
June 16, 2005
Joseph Hayden and Jalil Abdul Muntaqim aren't the most sympathetic guys in the world. Hayden served 13 years in New York prisons for killing a man during an argument in Harlem in 1986. Released three years ago, he'll be on parole until 2007.
Muntaqim was convicted of shooting two police officers in the 1970s, when he belonged to the Black Liberation Army. He's doing life in an upstate prison and probably will never get out.
Both are plaintiffs in a case to be argued before a federal appeals court this month challenging New York's felon disenfranchisement law. And while until now I've been skeptical about the call to repeal such laws, I've changed my mind.
New York's election law bars Hayden from voting until he gets off parole, and essentially says that Muntaqim will never cast a vote in this state. There's been growing criticism of such laws since the 2000 presidential election, when one of the many flukes of the Florida election was that hundreds of thousands of felons who had completed their sentences were barred from voting.
Laws like those in Florida and Alabama, which bar felons from voting for life, are clearly excessive. New York's is less so, but there are still arguments against it. First, that voting is not a privilege, but a right guaranteed by the Constitution, and states don't have the right to take it away, even from someone like Muntaqim. Second, that such laws are doubly unfair to communities of color, which are treated more harshly and often unfairly by the criminal justice system, and then have their voting power diluted because they have a larger proportion of felons.
Third, the history of felony disenfranchisement laws stinks. In the South they were enacted to keep blacks from voting. Other laws made harmless acts like quitting a job, being unemployed or simply congregating, into felonies, which allowed blacks to be arrested, convicted and stripped of their right to vote. According to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, whose lawyers are representing Hayden and Muntaqim, disenfranchising blacks was one of the motivations behind passing New York's law in 1821.
But the most convincing argument against these laws is this one: What purpose do they serve?
"What does it accomplish?" asks Frances Fox Piven, a professor at the City University of New York's graduate school and an expert on American voting habits. "It's certainly not an effective form of punishment, since a lot of people don't have that kind of faith and love for the right to vote. So there's nothing to be lost, and maybe something to be gained, by making the right to vote universal."
She also doesn't "see the point of depriving these people of the right to express their opinion."
And isn't that what voting is? So what are we afraid will happen if inmates and former inmates get the vote? That they'll try to elect other criminals to office? That they'll vote for legislators who want to water down the criminal laws and create statutes of limitations for murder? Clearly none of this is going to happen. In Maine and Vermont, where prison inmates vote by absentee ballot, nothing horrible has happened as a result.
I know there are people who say if you do the crime, then you deserve to lose all your rights. But these are the same folks who think prison inmates should be denied college courses - even though education helps them stay straight once they get out. Following elections and voting in them is probably good practice for inmates in being good citizens, which benefits all of us in the long run.
About 131,000 New Yorkers can't vote because of the felon disenfranchisement law. Nationwide, it's close to 5 million. It's time to get rid of these laws, for the primary reason that they serve no good purpose.
Sheryl McCarthy's e-mail address is mccart731@aol.com
Newsday website:
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-opmcc164305834jun16,0,7264090.column?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
Subscribe to Newsday home delivery | Article licensing and reprint options
...............................................................................................................................................................................
Republished here by
T.A.B.A.C.C.O. (Truth About Business And Congressional Crimes Organization)
Tabacco's own comment:
If she weren’t about half my age, I would swear we were twins, separated at birth. Sheryl McCarthy gets it right so often, it’s scary. She doesn’t just hit the nail on the head, she hits all the nails!
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