Why allow convicted criminals to vote?

Question

According to a 1998 HRW report,

The United States may have the world’s most restrictive criminal disenfranchisement laws. We know of no other democracy besides the United States in which convicted offenders who have served their sentences are nonetheless disenfranchised for life. A few countries restrict the vote for a short period after conclusion of the prison term: Finland and New Zealand, for example, restrict the vote for several years after completion of sentence, but only in the case of persons convicted of buying or selling votes or of corrupt practices. Some countries condition disenfranchisement of prisoners on the seriousness of the crime or the length of their sentence. Others, e.g., Germany and France, permit disenfranchisement only when it is imposed by a court order.

Many countries permit persons in prison to vote. According to research by Penal Reform International, prisoners may vote in countries as diverse as the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Netherlands, Norway, Peru, Poland, Romania, Sweden and Zimbabwe. In Germany, the law obliges prison authorities to encourage prisoners to assert their voting rights and to facilitate voting procedures. The only prisoners who may not vote are those convicted of electoral crimes or crimes (e.g., treason) that undermine the “democratic order,” and whose court-imposed sentence expressly includes disenfranchisement.

There's a BBC story with more details as to where and how prisoners can vote: But it doesn't say much about the arguments for.

There's already a question on Politics.SE exploring the reasons for the US restrictions. What I want to ask here is (the opposite basically): what are the motivations for being as non-restrictive as the countries mentioned by HRW above, e.g. why allow people in prison (never mind after release) to vote? Granted, it will be difficult to make a world-wide survey, but I'd like to hear some arguments that are raised in countries that have least restrictive laws on criminals voting.

Answer 1

The most trite answer is a civil rights protection against the following algorithm:

1. Win a legislative election.
2. Pass any law which disproportionately imprisons the supporters of your opponents.
3. Profit.

This is relatively hard to prevent through other constitutional means, since the law doesn't need to be exclusively or primarily politically targeted to have an effect.

Answer 2

1. Democracy: Criminals (including those in jail) are affected by the results of the political process. Allowing them to vote gives their an option for their opinions to be heard.

   If you want to signal criminals that they are not full members of the society, do it coherently: convicted criminals cannot vote, but they get to pay less taxes, too.

   On the other hand, if a demography feels (with or without reason) that they are being discriminated against and you take away the legal tools they have to fight that discrimination, the likely result is a big discontent and a loss of attachment to the legal system.

2. Rehabilitation: An important part of the penal system is supposed to be rehabilitation of the offender so s/he can become a law-abiding citizen. But when you release from prison you tell them that they cannot be trusted with something as harmless as a vote.

   And before you say (and please present evidence if you do) that "criminals will vote for criminals", let's remember that the voting record of law-abiding citizens is far from being stellar, and if the criminals vote for an appallingly bad candidate then their votes will be nullified by the mass of good citizens who will vote for "good" candidates.

   And of course, it has been explained here often how preventing people with low IQ from voting is bad, even if they are likely to vote "bad". Criminals should make no difference.

3. End of the punishment: A life-long restriction will mark former convicts for life. Maybe it has been 50 years since you committed your crime and you have been clear since then, but you still have the mark of your conviction, to remind you of that.

4. It is useless as a deterrent: If someone is willing to commit a crime that could end with one (or twenty) years of jail... do you think the loss of the right to vote is going to make a difference?

Answer 3

Here are some actual arguments given in cases around the world, extracted from a paper focusing on the Irish case:

• Israel: after Yigal Amir assassinated Rabin, there was a court case asking for Amir's voting rights to be curtailed. The Israeli supreme court refused stating that Amir's imprisonment was his punishment and that in denying the right to vote ‘the base of all fundamental rights is shaken’. So I read this as they took it as an inalienable human right.

• South Africa (post-Apartheid): There was no actual law prohibiting prisoners from voting, but there was no voting going on in prisons either. There was a 2003 case in which the government argued that ‘making provision for convicted prisoners to vote would in these circumstances send an incorrect message to the public that the government is soft on crime’. The SA Chief Justice rejected this argument however, stating that:

  It could hardly be suggested that the government is entitled to disenfranchise prisoners in order to enhance its image; nor could it reasonably be argued that the government is entitled to deprive convicted prisoners of valuable rights that they retain in order to correct a public misconception as to its true attitude to crime and criminals. (Minister of Home Affairs v. Nicro , CCT 3/4, 2004)

• Canada (2002); the Canadian Supreme Court rejected in a 5-to-4 vote

  the Government’s argument to deny inmates the right to vote because of some ‘vague and symbolic objectives’ about enhancing civic responsibility and respect for the rule of law. Quite the contrary, in fact; the denial of the right to vote would not promote civic responsibility as the Government had argued, but it was ‘more likely to send messages that undermine the respect for the law and democracy than messages that enhance those values’ . The Supreme Court ruled that it could not ‘permit elected representatives to disenfranchise a segment of the population’ (Sauvé v . Canada , 2002).

So again, an argument that it is an inalienable right, so that not even a majority vote could remove it from a group.

• In contrast to the above, in 2004 the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) determined that the right to vote (and stand for election) is not absolute. However, they ruled that blanket bans (such as: everyone in prison, a rule that the UK had) were contravening Article 3 of Protocol 1, the right to free elections. Since then, there have been a slew of cases at ECHR; in a contrasting case, ECHR found that Italy's laws which provided for a loss of voting (in time) proportional to the crime's main/prison sentence was ok. But they also ruled against Russia's or Bulgaria's more blanket provisions. The UK has adopted a "face saving" measure in which they allow a very small number of prisoners to vote, as to comply with the letter of ECHR ruling. This was a recent development; it remains to be seen if the ECHR will see it as sufficient. In contrast to the UK, Ireland passed a law in 2006 allowing prisoner postal vote (explicit reference was made to the 2004 ECHR ruling against the UK); there was not a single opposition raised (on principle) in the parliamentary debates for the law. In fact the parliamentary opposition argued for the law more than the government in the debates. Of note is that there was no blanket prohibition in Irish law against prisoners voting since 1963 (when some acts having such prohibition dating from 1870 and 1923 we abolished), but there were no facilities provided either. And to round up this EU discussion, in contrast to Israel, some European countries (Germany and some nordic ones) allow the removal of voting rights for politically motivated (e.g. terrorist) crimes, but not for most other. In a more limited ruling (as in it did not address blanket bans), the ECJ has decided in 2015 that a voting ban for life issued against a French citizen under a law that is no longer the current one in France, still does not violate the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The Court justified this by arguing that while voting is a fundamental right, it can still be restricted, provided the restriction is "proportionate in so far as it takes into account the nature and gravity of the criminal offence committed and the duration of the penalty".

It's certainly not a coincidence that among the countries supporting least restrictions, e.g. South Africa or Ireland, had a significant history of [having had] political prisoners.

Answer 4

A few points not brought up by the other answers:

Criminals are not uniformly of one party. In certain cases reformed criminals, or even unreformed criminals, might be much wiser voters who are less easily beguiled than the innocent. For example:

• Suppose a white collar criminal employs some blue collar criminals to perpetrate some unlawful deed. The blue collar criminals are caught and convicted, but they get no help from their white collar boss who has a great lawyer and walks.

  Later the white collar criminal runs for office on his spotless criminal record, perhaps on some anti-crime platform. The general public may believe he's honest as he claims. His former employees know better, and would never vote for him. By disenfranchising them, the nation deprives itself of wiser votes.

  Prior to running for office, that same white collar criminal also interacted with all sorts of underworld people who know what he is -- drug dealers, pimps, etc. For them he is a necessary evil, but a very obnoxious customer. They also may have criminal records, but would dearly love to do their part to keep that man out of office.

• Similarly, the unfortunate blue collar criminals of the previous example have more direct experience with white collar crime than the average voter. When evaluating a different criminal candidate whom they never worked for, but who seems suspiciously similar in manners and history to their former boss, they're more likely than the average voter to recognize that different candidate as another white collar criminal.

• Many criminals appreciate law, and know that their crimes are only profitable because relatively few people commit them. Some are raising children kept unaware of their parents misdeeds. They don't necessarily want a general lawlessness, and therefore hope to vote for better candidates than themselves.

• Ex-con voters make a good counterbalance to naive law-and-order extremist Vlad The Impaler types.

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Note: this Q. employs the verb allow which implies a viewpoint more congenial to monarchies rather than democracies. A less monarchical phrasing might be "Why uphold the rights of convicts to vote?", or more adversarially "Why not allow the state to violate convicts' voting rights?"

Answer 5

Citizens who are convicted of crimes don't stop being citizens and start being criminals arbitrarily, and voting is not a privilege: it is a civic duty. It makes sense that the default should be preserving an individual's civil liberties so that they can carry out their larger duties as a citizen unless (as in the case of France, Germany and others, where a judge can decide to disenfranchise in the case of serious, politically motivated crimes) the disenfranchisement is directly relevant to their transgression.

Answer 6

First and foremost: The question is ill-considered because universal suffrage is considered now a basic human right.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 21

(1) Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

There is the word: "Everyone". A basic human right means by definition that any limitations must be strictly and convincingly justified, not the other way round. This is easy to understand: Take one of the basic rights most highly regarded, e.g. freedom of speech in the USA and ask the question: Why may democrats/republicans/radicals speak their nonsense publicly? Or that human dignity is inviolable in Germany and ask the question: Why don't I have the right to insult everyone I like? In both cases it is clear from the outset that the asker, not the askee, must justify his proposal.

So if the OP does not want to challenge the Human Rights in general then the question is manipulative. There is no reason necessary to allow criminals to vote. The correct question is: "What good reasons do I have that criminals should lose the right to vote?" which is still a good question.

grovkin already gave arguments for that and was chided for answering the wrong question when he was right to argument this way.

So how are limitations for criminals justified for example in Germany?.

The anti-discrimination law in Article 3 of the Grundgesetz (basic law) does not mention criminal actions as something which justifies requirement of protection.

More interesting is the §13 of the Bundeswahlgesetz (federal voting law):

The first passage is the interesting one and mentions the Richterspruch (court decision):

• The highest court in Germany is able to revoke the voting right for a person permanently, but this never happened and is unlikely to happen.

• A person who had committed a crime with at least one year prison loses his/her right to be voted into public positions for five years, but not the right to vote.

• A person who did the following crimes can(!) lose the right to vote for 2-5 years:

  a) (High) Treason.
  b) Voter fraud
  c) Voting manipulation
  d) Voting coercion: Threat of violence, bribes etc.

So the law pinpoints the exact reasons why the perpetrator is unfit to vote and the committed crimes makes it very hard to argue against that. In all cases (apart from the one which never happened) the loss of rights is also temporarily so the ECHR had no complaint against the German law.

ADDITION: I see that it seems to be misinterpreted as "Germany's laws are better than those of other countries/ Germany's laws should be a model". This is not the case. It simply says that if restrictions apply, they must have a good reason. If other countries choose to have no restrictions, that is absolutely fine.

When I said "no restrictions", I, the UN and most other people assume that a voter belongs to the population who wants to vote, is physically capable to vote by deciding and communicating this decision (is not in a coma, in a state of severe psychosis etc.) and has reached the age of being an independent person (a child is dependent on the love of its parents, so it really cannot make an independent decision). "Everyone" is not a mathematical definition, but a shortcut for "has per default the right to vote".

Answer 7

You are begging the question: assuming that they shouldn't be allowed to vote is self evident and thus that there must be some argument that overrides that or it would never be allowed.

"what are the motivations" ... "why allow", these are really only relevant in a context where an alternative was proposed or was the standard, but you haven't established that it was either an existing standard or proposed. If nobody ever suggested taking their right to vote away, then there was never any motivation or reason to allow them to vote -- that is just how things are.

And if it is how things are, then the question becomes: why should they be prevented from voting? What argument is there for disenfranching them? They have broken the law, and are being punished for it, but does it make sense for that punishment to include silencing them?

And once you start down the path of removing their votes, where will you stop and why?

It's quite likely that a number of places never had an initial "decision" to remove the votes of prisoners, instead a side effect of their being imprisoned was that they were physically unable to vote. They could not set up poll booths of their own, and they could not go to the poll booths setup by others.

Enabling them to vote would have to be a deliberate decision, because it requires setting up the physical infrastructure, IF there isn't a simple way Already setup for absentee-voters. If they can vote by mail for instance, there may not have been a decision to allow it, they were simply able to use an pre-existing method.

But all of this is dependent upon each individual localities history, which hasn't been established and which it is unreasonable for anyone to simply know off hand.

Answer 8

Two issues:

1. It really depends on if your goal with incarceration is that of punishment, rehabilitation, or both. If one of the latter categories, that means that these people are going to re-enter society at some point, and thus should have a say on how that society functions.

2. How does one reform one's treatment of prisoners/law breakers if those who have/are experiencing said treatment are disallowed from voting? As long as imprisonment is a state-mandated exercise, it remains a purview of voting, and thus its victims should be able to vote.

Answer 9

As a thought experiment, imagine that the court would have to list all the punishments that a criminal is going to receive during the sentencing, or even decide on each one separately.

• The "main part" of the sentence, be it a prison term or fine.
• Other fines or fees.
• Supervision after release.
• Formal (legal) limits on his employability after release.
• Loss of custody of children.
• ...
• Loss of voting rights.

For many sentences, tacking on a lifelong loss of voting rights would look disproportionate on that list. (And so might some of the others, including employability.) Why should a petty criminal be allowed to leave the prison after just a few months, but not be allowed to vote again even after the parole ends (if there was any)? Either he has "paid his debt to society" after that time or he hasn't, they should make up their mind.

Consider that voting is a fundamental civil right. Not quite as important as freedom from incarceration, but taking it away should be a well-considered decision, with the length of the punishment fitting the severity of the crime. A lifelong loss of voting rights tacked onto any sentence as a routine matter demeans the importance of voting (by non-criminals) and the democratic process.

Answer 10

If the law under which a person is convicted was unjust, the person can later cast votes for representatives (or on direct questions to the voters) to change the laws. For example, someone convicted of having consensual sexual relations with someone of the same gender or a different race might wish to express their views at the ballot box, especially once there are enough others with a changing view to be able to change the law.

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
- Attributed to John F. Kennedy

Once enough people are convicted and imprisoned under unjust laws, if they lose any right to peacefully effect change in the society, those unjustly-treated people groups might be more incentivized to violent revolution than a peaceful society would prefer.

This is why some jurisdictions not only allow criminals to vote after their sentence has been served, but even while they are serving their sentences (e.g. Maine and Vermont).

Answer 11

I think, in its simplest form, the answer is this:

If the convicted person has already served the entirely of their sentence, then their debt to society is paid, and they have already served their punishment.

Not allowing them to participate as citizens would be additional punishment. Allowing them to vote is in line with the idea that "you do the crime, you serve your time," and that's the end of it.

The USA seems somewhat harsher than most other societies in the desire for any criminal to be branded for life in one fashion or another, whether it be the call for longer and more harsh incarcerations for just about any infraction, or additional punishment beyond what the convicted was sentenced to.

Answer 12

It could be argued that individuals who are elected or appointed to be public officials who have not been convicted of a crime are not less likely to commit a crime once in an office of public trust

• List of American state and local politicians convicted of crimes

• List of American federal politicians convicted of crimes

thus making the distinction between being a convicted felon or not immaterial as to whether an individual class has a propensity to commit a crime.

Where the argument for universal suffrage regardless of criminal conviction would cause controversy for specific classes is for particularly heinous criminal convictions; that is, for example, child molestation and rape; for which victims might contest that the individual should be out of prison at all due to the lack of ability to rehabilitate such individuals, irrespective of the punishment meted out by, in some cases, very lengthy or not very length prison sentences, depending on how much actual political power the party has.

Referring to the list of politicians who have been convicted of crimes which compromised the public trust, the fact that they violated the public trust, there is little reason to believe that they would not do so again for their own personal material gain or incessant desire to be in a position which provides a means to control masses of people and abuse their public power.

However, those two arguments fail to demonstrate that a convicted child molester or rapist or a politician convicted of embezzlement or accepting bribes while in office would effect their individual civic judgment as to the local vote for the issuance of bonds by the government for road improvements or public school infrastructure improvements, notwithstanding the fact that their rationale for road improvements or school infrastructure improvements might be for purely personal motivations.

Thus, there should be a relation to the disenfranchisement, whether for a period of time, or durante vita, to the particular item to be voted on.

Disenfranchising individuals committed to being involved in the voting process does not stop individuals from organizing other people to vote or otherwise being active politically.

The aim of disenfranchisement of citizens is twofold: punishment for crimes against society and marking the individual as unworthy of trust within that society.

One could argue that public safety agents who murder innocent citizens should have their vote taken for life, though so few of those individuals are even prosecuted for the murders they commit Police shootings of unarmed black people have not ended. But top-level political conversations about them have., whether they are convicted of a crime or not, because they are murdered with impunity, even in their own backyard.

So, criminals are already allowed to vote, before they are caught and convicted of a crime, and when they commit a crime against a particular class that is allowed to vote though does not have the political power to stop themselves from being murdered by individuals who will more than likely not be charged with murder for shooting unarmed citizens.

A vote does not equate to political power. Punishments, if any, are meted out to some, while others receive no punishment for their actions.

Allowing convicted criminals to vote will not change the result of the electoral college, not stop certain classes of individuals from being murdered in the public by public officials.

Thus, the vote to be meaningless for some, regardless if they are a convicted criminal or not, they can be slaughtered on their own property or in the streets, or in their vehicles with children and their family inside the vehicle. And since the vote is meaningless for certain classes, it makes no difference as to the balance of power if they are allowed to vote. Criminals that have no convictions vote.

There is no substantial difference between allowing a convicted pedophile to vote and allowing public safety agents who empty their firearm clip without realizing how many rounds they have fired, striking and ultimately murdering an unarmed citizen with impunity. For their victims life will never be the same, or will have ended at their hands. For some classes, the ability or being "allowed" to vote cannot alone change their status or improve their lives.

For some the vote is a token novelty while the real criminals commit real crime without being charged with any crime and no vote will change that political reality for them within the given political system.

Convicted criminals should be allowed to vote because the vote is of no significant value to the ruling class and its enforcement agents.

Answer 13

While many answers focused on the the re-immersion of the ex-convict back into society, and why that is important, there are other reasons why legislators and executives push to allow criminals to vote, which are political.

The first is that you have a very clear evidence that the ex-con will likely vote for you over your opponent.

“Democrats would benefit from additional ex-felon participation,” said the authoritative study in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

The authors, professors from the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University, found that in some states, felons register Democratic by more than six-to-one. In New York, for example, 61.5 percent of convicts are Democrats, just 9 percent Republican. They also cited a study that found 73 percent of convicts who turn out for presidential elections would vote Democrat.

– New York: 61.5 percent register Democratic, 9 percent register Republican

– New Mexico: 51.9 percent Democratic, 10.2 percent Republican

– North Carolina: 54.6 percent Democratic, 10.2 percent Republican

The study did indicate that getting out the vote is different than party affiliation. The literature is replete with other examples, and this age of razor thin win margins, it shouldn't surprise that the swing felon vote could be the deciding factor.

Backing this point, many Democratic politicians support felon voter right restoration. Terry McAuliffe and Eric Holder, to name two.

Another possible reason is that injecting ex-convicts into the polity would add grass root support to policy positions and to overall party narratives. What type of policy or narratives might an ex-con support? A reduction of mandatory minimums, decriminalization and normalization of historically considered criminal behavior, jury nullification, the "right" to be forgotten, the war on standards to name a few. One would think that class warfare narratives would be especially appealing to this cohort. This works both ways as it must. As the criminal voices appeals to their interests, the party that takes stock of those interests over time becomes more pro-criminal.

Answer 14

The short answer is that you should allow felons to vote because it is an inalienable human right.

Let's cut to the chase - the question really is, Why prevent felons from voting?

The answer to this is simply that it is a voter suppression tactic that is widely applied in the USA. To see why, check out which group of people is disproportionately incarcerated and what are typically their voting intentions.

Answer 15

I started to look into the Czech legalities and it ends up getting quite complex. There are different voting rights, active and passive, and different conditions of voter, such as mentally ill, alcoholic, drug dependent, psychologically disturbed and so on.

In various high court judgments it seems as though in almost all cases the sacrosanct and paramount principle is 'universal voting rights'. The reasoning being that any justification to take away one set of rights (why would mentally impaired alcoholics be allowed to vote) could be applied to all kinds of other subgroups and fundamentally undermine democracy. The abuse of power to cast certain groups into a disenfranchised role is something fresh in the minds of people here, post revolution.

Answer 16

What is the purpose of using votes to decide political questions?

• To substitute a vote for a civil war. If each person has a similar military capability, a vote can estimate who would win a battle, and make the battle unnecessary.
• To provide representation at the community level. (This is what Americans in 1775 meant by "No taxation without representation.") This can ensure that taxation is in proportion to communities' ability to pay.
• To provide representation at a family level. This can encourage people to "do their part" to have a nice community, or defend their country.
• To provide representation at an individual level.
• To remind the people who govern the country that the voters are citizens, and that the government needs to work on behalf of the citizens.
• As a ritual that reminds voters that they have a role in making the laws (or electing the law makers). This encourages the voters (and their families) to recognize the legitimacy of the laws and law enforcers.

Each of these reasons implies a corresponding reason to allow convicted criminals to vote, or disallow convicted criminals from voting.

If convicted criminals are a significant portion of the population capable of paying taxes, serving in the military, or keeping order / making trouble / defeating a foreign occupation, then keeping them from voting makes the "proxy for a civil war" less accurate.

In the United States, some communities lose a disproportionately large share of their votes (because they have many convicted criminals). This is mitigated by the Electoral College, districting for elections, and states and local jurisdictions having substantial powers.

Answer 17

Well, one good reason is that jailing might be used as a punitive measure out of all proportion to the offence.

This is what Michelle Alexander implies in her book, The New Jim Crow, where she claims incarceration has become a tool in disenfranchising the black male population. She also points out that one current trends around a third of the black male population will be incarcerated.