Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz registered to vote behind bars; one victim's father tweets outr

Discussion in 'Political Discussions' started by Abner, Nov 12, 2018.

Loading...
  1. Abner

    Abner Well-Known Member

  2. Phdtobe

    Phdtobe Well-Known Member

    Nicolas Cruz is a wicked person. A terrible human being. Anyway, i do not under why the scums of the earth loose the right to vote. My opinion ( liberal I guess) is that every citizen should have the right to vote, regardless . There are millions of citizens who have lost their rights to vote.
     
  3. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Blame that pesky "due process" stuff. He hasn't been convicted of anything (yet), and this is one of the consequences of having a system in which people are presumed innocent until proven guilty.
     
  4. Phdtobe

    Phdtobe Well-Known Member

    But is it right to take away voting right if convicted of a crime? I do not see how the two things are related. Although stand corrected, i don’t think this is done in Canada. I have never heard of it being discussed as an issue up here.
     
  5. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Meanwhile in the U.S. the amendment ending slavery explicitly excluded criminals, so this sort of thing probably shouldn't be a surprise.

    Combine that with the American approach of treating every problem like it needs a criminal justice solution -- more people are incarcerated here than any other country in the world (yes, even China, and yes, even though they have four times our population).

    It's been a potent recipe for mass disenfranchisement.
     
  6. Phdtobe

    Phdtobe Well-Known Member

    Voters suppression as old as slavery. I didn’t know that about the right to lose the right of voting in the constitution . It just seems like a weird thing to do. I have been getting my US history and politics from DI so there must be something more profound to this amendment.
     
  7. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    That's not what I said. The thirteenth amendment was enacted after the Civil War. It reads:

    "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

    (Emphasis added.) And because of that exception, latter-day slavery continues in the U.S., one notable example of which is this: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/06/the-clintons-had-slaves
     
  8. Phdtobe

    Phdtobe Well-Known Member

    Thanks anyway, I am not sure what it means but from previous posts - slavery emancipation - lost voting rights for conviction. I like freeing slaves. Losing voting rights for convictions could be modernized.
     
  9. Maniac Craniac

    Maniac Craniac Moderator Staff Member

    Good points as always Steve, but let's not forget that crime more frequently goes unsolved or unpunished in China and that legal proceedings are routinely expedited by mysterious disappearances rather than incarcerations.

    Unless this specific research has already been carried out, and I'm just unware of it, I'm not sure there's a reliable way to account for how differences in police effectiveness and criminal procedural 'expediting' have on the statistics.
     
  10. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    Perhaps, but then, as Peter Drucker said, "There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."
     
    Maniac Craniac likes this.

Share This Page