There's no reason any prison sentence should automatically remove someone's right to vote, even while they're in prison. Especially since often those most oppressed by society are the ones more likely to end up in prison, and those most oppressed by society are also the ones who most need to not have what little political power they have taken away.

Imprisonment takes away their freedom, we don't have to add more punishments than that unless there are specific reasons to do so, we don't need to add more punishments just for punishments' sake, just to be cruel, or just because we can. Unnecessarily taking away rights like this helps no one. It does not better protect the public (one purpose of incarceration). It does not aid in rehabilitating the criminal... that goal is aided by making people feel more a part of society, not more apart from it, and is so yet another reason it makes sense to let them vote.

I think the biggest reason many states don't want to let felons or prisoners vote is that a disproportionate number of people in prison are people of color. We have a long history of making it hard for POC to vote, and this is just one more way.

And to the OP, you can count on the GOP to unfairly go after whoever our candidate is. Shall we now post all the possible attack angles of all our candidates and prove that every one of them will lose?

BTW, this was discussed extensively in multiple threads back in April when Sanders first made news with this. There's also a good article on it at https://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/vermont-is-one-of-two-us-states-that-let-incarcerated-citizens-vote/Content?oid=22484635

There are all sorts of rights we take away from prisoners.

They don't have the right to freedom of movement. Not the same rights to speech. Not the same rights to takings/own property.
No right to bear arms.

There are a plethora of rights that are restricted to prisoners.

Why is the right to vote (which technically isn't even in the Constitution...it should be, but it isn't) somehow sacrosanct vice the other rights lost while incarcerated?

I think the MOMENT you leave incarceration, including parole, you should regain your right to vote.

The issue with POC in prison is a different issue that definitely needs to be addressed on its own merits with other legislation like decriminalizing drugs, "unracifying" our CJ system, fixing our education system, etc etc.

There are obvious reasons to take away prisoners' freedom of movement or right to bear arms. What is the REASON to take away the right to vote? How are the goals of public safety or inmate rehabilitation being served? We're just finding another way to punish them "because we can."

And then once you accept that there is a whole racial component, how can you in good conscience say that we need to deal with that separately? The "unracifying" of our CJ system will take who knows how many years, how will that help the people in prison TODAY?

Moreover, in thinking about how we can speed up that "unracifying," one piece of that could be to STOP preventing POC from voting... and since POC are disproportionately incarcerated, by not letting them voting, you are adding yet one more impediment to that "unracifying." If prisoners were a represented constituency (as they would be if they could vote), you'd probably see a lot more interest in addressing the racial issues of our CJ system.

This may be the biggest argument in ALLOWING prisoners to vote. Taking away their right to vote is just terrible racial policy. People with no representation are a low priority for getting their concerns addressed. Prisoners are still citizens.

affects all those rights.

So yeah there's nothing special about the right to vote vice any other right.
And what about white prisoners? There's no racial component there?
Prison in part is supposed to be a removal from society. You violated societies norms, so you get a timeout.
I have no problem with that timeout including the ability to vote. It's not punishment. It's part of the panoply of rights you lose when you decide you don't want to follow society's rules.

allowing everyone, including people on death row, to vote.

But yes, I think everyone in prison should be allowed to vote. Unless maybe their crime was voter fraud.

Anyone who has received a sentence of life in prison should forfeit the vote.

occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania has no problem going full on racist.

Also, Sanders is usually the second most likely polled Dem to beat Trump. Is this an effort to weaken Bernie long before the first primary?

he will give the Boston Bomber, or Charleston Church butcher or any felon on death row the vote. Harris said 'we should have that conversation' - Pete said no. Joe 'tough on crime' Biden would love to be asked about it.

Why would anyone want to stop them from voting?

I'm sure Bernie will be ready for the question. Will Biden?

As I said, Bernie believes the right to vote is sacrosanct, as is prepared to lose an election rather than compromise his principles. It is this - not his ideology or policies- that mean I am opposing him at this critical moment in time.

No Repub ever lost standing up for crazy ideas like "Mexico will pay for the wall".

Seems to me they might actually vote for Bernie because they see that Trump is wrong and Bernie is correct. And they will respect Bernie more because, in the end, he stood up for an "unpopular" idea.

Standing for what is right, is never wrong.

IF prisoner on death row does not have the right 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness', likewise, he or she has also lost the right to vote.

2. If I had to choose hill to make my stand, it would not be for mass murders.

...So why stop them from voting?

My mentally ill son was in solitary for about 5 months for selling his medical pot to a undercover cop in CA before we even knew it. Only after a long search did we find him there. He was dehydrated and delusional when he made it to a hospital.

They will do everything, and anything to you if they "think" you are criminal. Including your right to vote.

Add to that the possibility that Trump calls for martial law, and we are all f......

and equally sorry I have to oppose his candidacy with all I have for this reason.

The ad of jailers handing ballot papers to black prisoners through the bars, and them ticking on the Democrats, is perfect for Trump, and a catastrophe for Democrats.

You'd take the vote away from millions (disproportionately people of color, and often on non-violent offenses) to make sure that those 2500 can't vote?

There is no reason to take away any right from someone if that right endangers no one. The punishment is the imprisonment (or death sentence). We don't have to make up more punishments. If for some reason the sentencing judge wants to rule that a particular person's punishment should include taking away the right to vote, okay. But we should not be adding more punishments beyond those ordered.

What is the down side in letting the incarcerated vote? (Two states do permit it.)

There are upsides, as I discussed in other comments, including the racial justice argument at post #58.

I think most if not all of our candidates are against the death penalty. I'm more concerned with abolishing the death penalty than in determining whether people who have received the death penalty should be able to vote.

Please also see my post #41.

She said "people should not be stripped {of the right to vote} needlessly." This was in a Don Lemon interview. After this statement, Lemon reiterated, almost in disbelief, that she could actually be agreeing with Sanders' position about this, and while diplomatically saying "we should have the conversation," she did not in any way backtrack on earlier statement, even when Lemon made sure she knew they were talking about giving the Boston Bomber the right to vote. So yes, in full context, her answer to "should the boston bomber have the right to vote" was "we should not needlessly striup people of the right to vote." And where exactly is the NEED to strip the boston bomber of the right to vote?

I'll stick to the legal one. People on death row have been stripped of all the rights of a Citizen other than the right to due process, and the rule of law. The have most certainly lost their right to vote.

They have other rights. For example, even on death row, they have the right to practice the religion of their choice. They have the right to a certain level of medical care. (We don't tell them, "hey, you got pneumonia? sorry, no meds for you, you have no right to them, and you're gonna die soon anyway." )

And you know, even people on death row have, on occasion, later found to have been innocent.

They are under state care. They have no right to speech, to bear arms, no rights against searches and seizures. Practicing religion - that would depend on SCOTUS. If they were a member of a coven? Doubtful. And yes people on death row have been found innocent - they have the right to due process. I am more interested in abolishing the death penalty altogether than the votes for felons convicted of capital offenses. Innocent people have been put to death.

Bernie has shown a willingness to go out of his way to tear down his opponents, and has no sense of loyalty to other Democrats while Bernie is largely spared from the onslaught of attack ads that a front runner would normally face. When Biden was asked about other Democratic candidates, Biden has said that his primary opponents could also beat Trump:

Joe Biden: 'I think almost anybody' in 2020 Democratic field could be the president
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2019/08/30/joe-biden-i-think-almost-anybody-could-beat-donald-trump-2020/2168099001/

In sharp contrast, Bernie has shown a willingness to go negative and make no holds barred attacks on his primary opponents and Democrats generally, which the GOP will happily utilize. For example, Bernie has already shown a willingness to attack Elizabeth Warren, who is more progressive than he is, as a corporate Democrat:

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/449346-sanders-knocks-warren-corporate-wing-of-democratic-party-is-anybody-but

...I would not call those things "scorched earth."

The article you referenced from "The Hill" about Warren, itself, calls the tweet "a light jab." And that's The Hill, who has an inclination to make mountains out of mole hills to begin with.

Your only other example was the "open borders" comment where he simply denied being for open borders. That's scorched earth? Do you think many candidates would have answered that substantially differently?

Meanwhile, look at the shots that Harris, Booker, and Gillibrand took against Biden in the debates, and tell me who is willing to scorch (or at least tinge) some earth.

First, as noted in my earlier post, Bernie has no problems attacking the Democratic party and other Democrats in general. It is foolish to think that Republicans are not keeping their powder dry and waiting to use Bernie's own words against him and Democrats down ballot. For example, look at 2016:

The Top 15 Sanders Attacks On Clinton
https://gop.com/the-top-15-sanders-attacks-on-clinton/

Can you imagine if Bernie was the Presidential nominee? Bernie's attacks on the Democratic party would be running 24/7 against every Democratic candidate throughout the Nation. This would not only weaken him, but it would weaken Democratic candidates Nationwide. Like Trump, Bernie has risen to popularity by portraying himself as an outsider crusading against a corrupt establishment. Well, Bernie has an even longer record then Trump when it comes to attacking the party he would purport to lead.

Second, as you note, Bernie has benefited from Biden being the leader and has been spared being the main target of attacks. Bernie's record on gun control, immigration, trade, and Russia have largely been ignored in the Democratic primaries. In the general election, Bernie would be uniquely weak to attack Trump on these issues.

opposition noise from a few.

on its own; why can't that be discussed without bringing up the other candidates?

This is not 1988. The reality is reality is beginning to sink in.

In 1988, the destruction of the middle class was nowhere near as obvious as it is now; there were not Jeffry Epstein types flaunting their criminality and for that matter, Donald Trumps flaunting his criminality.

I have no use for Bernie Sanders. I think he's a tiresome fool with simplistic and inflexible ideas. That said, as much as I hold him in low esteem, even if he is weaker than Michael Dukakis, I think if the country is quite capable of voting for the lesser of two idiots.

The election of Bernie Sanders to the Presidency in normal times would be a disaster, but look, if I have a choice between having curable leukemia and incurable pancreatic cancer, I know what I'd choose.

Those people in the church down south had it right. The only reason to vote for Donald Trump is that one is a white racist. Willie Horton certainly did bring in the racist vote for Bush, and the Bush claim that they're not racists is obviated by how they lived. But the Horton case was there to help small government fools put themselves over the top with the Klan vote.

Now there is only the Klan vote for the Republican party.

Given that choice between Hell and Hades, I'd choose Hades, and would even sit in the hut tub there with Bernie Sanders.

(yeah there has to be a but) Black prisoners, behind bars, marking their ballot papers for Democrats, is a killer political ad - it doesn't matter what year we are talking about.

...of his supporters who go full "Jill Stein."

I am disappointed in my country that it has allowed a criminal to be admitted as a resident of the White House, but I have not given up on us yet.

I think we know we've had enough of tired old white fools, either on the far right, or on the nominal left.

younger candidate who's a POC?

BTW, I'm not suggesting Warren's a fool.

But seeing a Warren supporter slam anyone for being old and white strikes me as incongruous.

Basically, they mostly disgust me as a class, but every class has its exceptions, even its brilliant shining exceptions, and among us baby boomers, Ms. Warren strikes me as that.

You know, I spent an afternoon with Freeman Dyson when he was in his late eighties. He was more brilliant than anyone I ever met, including younger people in the prime of life. On the other hand, I know people my age who can't tie their shoes.

Ms Warren is fresh. She makes a point of being able to change her mind. She's not repeating the same shit that she was repeating when she was 35. She was a Republican then, in fact.

As it happens I oppose her policies in an area that is most important to me, but that is unimportant because I know the facts and I know she looks at facts and let's them dictate her direction.

I've lived a long life. I change my mind about things all the time; I learn. Warren learns.

I don't see any of that in Sanders. What I see is an old crotchety white man repeating himself over and over and over and over and over.

We've had enough of that.

Ms. Warren is in the flower of her youth at 70. Sanders was a crotchety "get off my lawn" old man twenty years ago. There's a difference.

You see what I see.

ideas because he's an ideologue, and not because he's old or was prematurely old and crotchety. And I have read that he was a bit more of a pragmatist when he was a mayor (probably because he was forced to be in that situation).

Elizabeth Warren reminds me of some of my best female teachers, the older teachers, when I was in elementary school and junior high.

I wouldn't have said any of them were in "the flower of their youth," and I wouldn't say that about Warren. But they, like Warren, cared passionately about what they were doing, and that's a great source of energy. Those teachers could sometimes be very annoying in their determination -- I remember one who had our class diagram sentences all year, or almost all year, until I sometimes felt I could have diagrammed sentences in my sleep -- but they were very good teachers.

And I'm glad that Warren was able to switch from being a Republican to being a Democrat, after decades as a Republican adult. Though I still wonder at her staying a Republican so long at a time when the party was anathema to many young adults.

She was quite conservative during those years:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/16/politics/elizabeth-warren-regulations-critic-kfile/index.html

...physical age.

Youth is about having a fresh mind.

Look, I like Joe Biden. I think he's a fine man. I'm not entirely comfortable with his "reach across the aisle" rhetoric in 2019 since it was different when he was in the Senate 10 or 20 years ago. The people on the other side of the aisle were not Nazis then. Modern Republicans have made it very clear that they are comfortable with extreme racism, wanton environmental destruction, and physical violence against women, the latter being something of which many of them are actually proud, pussy grabbers in the White House, pussy grabbers on the Supreme Court.

Now, I have zero interest in academic politics from decades ago. I'm sure it's all very cute, and I'm sure at the time I might have been appalled about certain positions that Dr. Warren had as an academic. As for the tenure of a particular professor, I don't know a damned thing about it; neither does the journalist - we can argue that journalists are among the set which have lost much of their integrity in modern times - and neither do you.

I've had conversations with several people who have been denied tenure; none of them thought it was justified; all had some reason why the decision was wrong. Maybe in some cases they were right; in others they were clearly being inflated. Having no idea of who Drucilla Cornell is I looked at her Wikipedia page; she seems to have survived quite nicely as an academic. Any injustice toward her early in her academic career does not compare with the injustice of children being put in cages at the US border.

It doesn't compare with any of these horrors now taking place in this country and on this planet.

If Ms. Warren has been a rabid conservative and is now defined by the modern Das Sturmer, the propaganda channel at Fox News, as a "far left" candidate, she is more qualified to understand the path that led former airhead laissez-faire Ayn Rand worshiping "small government" types into being full blown Nazis than Joe Biden is. Unlike him, she knows whence they come.

I am not supporting her because she has always been crystalline pure of heart and soul. I'll leave that shit for Sanders supporters, albeit with their silly and frankly absurd view of what "purity" is. I'm supporting her because she's a young Democrat, because she's been there and done that, and changed. You can change only when you are young, I think Among these latter day Nazis, she will be better able to see if there are any left with a shred of integrity and decency, a dubious case I think, but to the extent that there are, as a religious person might put it, sinners who might be saved, she will be better able to tell who they might be.

I appreciate that Eleanor Roosevelt was able to sit at a dinner table with James Eastland and pretend to smile. But that was then and this is now. There can be no justice in wanting to do business with people who put small children in cages.

"specious" it's important to shine the light on it.

in the Senate.

I don't see it. I find it hard to envision ANY Dem losing a Clinton state to Trump.

This is fun! What else can we make up?

That stance seems incredibly ridiculous to me.

as strongly as I can. I'm going to put it to bed for the time being. Chris Cuomo could see what the problem was. Next debate will be back to lightbulbs and straws and busing.

Important piece!

His stance could affect us all.

In the 1988 Democratic presidential primary, Bernie Sanders endorsed Jesse Jackson.

If you want to compare a 2020 candidate to Dukakis then Elizabeth Warren could make sense as someone endorsed by him. Joe Biden or Kamala Harris could make sense as candidates who also aren’t leftmost.

Bernie Sanders is no Michael Dukakis.

Dukakis folded like a empty suit in a tank. Does not surprise me that Dukakis has endorsed Warren: those MA bleeding hearts you know It's lucky Elizabeth is from Oklahoma.

Their eyes would explode if the GOP ever went full-force on him. This helps to explain why BS is the favored candidate to run against by the GOP. They know exactly how vulnerable he is. They have done the vetting that we're discouraged from participating in here.

Bernie has been given a free pass by the cable media and his rivals. While Bernie has shown a willingness to pull no punches against the Democratic party in general as well as his primary rivals, other Democratic candidates have been reluctant to go super negative and make character attacks against other Democratic rivals. Meanwhile, Republicans are happy to cheer Bernie on because he is doing their work for them in attacking the Democratic party and his Democratic rivals.

In addition, Bernie of all candidates is in no position to attack Trump for being cozy with Russia. First, Bernie is the only member of Congress to vote against BOTH the Magnitsky Act and Russian election sanctions. Second, can you imagine if Biden had gone on his honeymoon in the Soviet Union? Fox News would be running stories on it 24/7.

Bernie is getting a little more vetting this year, since he is considered one of the front runners, but he is still largely being spared from being held accountable for his votes and actions with respect to gun control, immigration and Russia.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/17/bernie-sanders-mystery-soviet-video-revealed-1330347

If nominated, Joe Biden will hand the 2020 election to Donald Trump
If nominated, Kamala Harris will hand the 2020 election to Donald Trump
If nominated, Pete Buttiegeig will hand the 2020 election to Donald Trump

If nominated, Bernie Sanders will hand the 2020 election to Donald Trump. That's a repeat right there.

Bernie wasn't nominated and guess what???

Donald Fucking Trump.


Maybe we should GOTV in 2020 to make sure whoever is nominated wins?

I'm not a Bernie supporter, but I don't think people will fall for that Willie Horton crap today.

The right wingers hardest job would be choosing which one to exploit. And how many.

Link to tweet

Anybody know how we turn off the robot?

Also, I agree completely with the premise of the thread. Total loss and humiliation for Democrats if Sanders is the nominee. But I don't think he will be, thank goodness.

I don’t think it matters who the Dems nominate. Between Gerrymandering, voter restrictions, vote machine irregularities and foreign hacking/interference unless Congress does what it should do to ensure fair/secure elections I think it is unlikely dt loses.

They tried a Willie Horton type ad before the 2018 midterms and it backfired.

Sorry this policy is why Bernie has my vote. Whether something is popular or not he still supports the right thing. Also look at head to head polls plus there is opposition research they can also use on Biden & Warren.

You could put more time and energy ripping felony disenfranchisement which the ACLU is also against and how it is racist because they came up with felony disenfranchisement because of the 15th amendment. This is easy to debate the Republicans on.

I'm not in favor of taking voting rights from anyone.

...the answer is not to slam Bernie but to get better at responding to and/or creating our own 'Willie Horton' type ads...

" So I believe that people commit crimes, they paid the price. When they get out of jail, I believe they certainly should have the right to vote. But I do believe that even if they are in jail they're paying their price to society, but that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy. (APPLAUSE) "

...there's nothing indefensible in Bernie's position for those willing to fight for what's right...

...doesn't every citizen have an, "...inherent American right to participate in our democracy." regardless of circumstance?

...I think so...