Zogby Poll says Americans don't want felons Voting Rights restored

Zogby/Associated Television News Poll Reveals: Most Americans Oppose Voting Rights Restoration for Ex-Felons
Friday May 26, 6:00 am ET
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/060526/laf011.html?.v=59


LOS ANGELES, May 26 /PRNewswire/ -- A new poll conducted by Zogby Interactive for Associated Television News and The O'Leary Report shows that most Americans are opposed to the restoration of voting rights for former felons.

The Zogby/Associated Television News poll findings show that Americans oppose aspects of the Count Every Vote Act sponsored by Senators Hillary Clinton and John Kerry that would restore the voting rights of former convicted felons. Fifty-three percent of the American public believes that such a law giving back the right to vote to felons is bad for the country. Another 71% of the country feels that the motive for such legislation is to help win elections.

Twenty-three percent of the American public believes that felons, as a class, who are released from prison should get their voting rights back while 70% of Americans believe the vote should be restored on an individual basis and not as a class.

More at link:

*********************

This is why it's so hard to get reform. Look at those numbers. It is very courageous to propose this.

They went into a lot of detail about what kinds of crimes you would support/oppose restoring voting rights for. It was pretty interesting, and made me think about the issue in a more specific way than I had before. Should felons be allowed to vote while in prison? Should their rights only be restored when they get out? When they successfully complete parole? It was a great illustration of something we talk about a lot in here - the real world complexity of seemingly black-and-white issues.

BTW, if anyone wants to get on the Zogby poll mailing list, you can sign up here: http://interactive.zogby.com/ and then click on the Join Now link.

I just signed up.

deserve a second chance.

for me. The classifications of felons weren't differentiated enough for me. Do I want a murderer or child molester to have the ability to vote? I don't want them to have any rights.
But if someone winds up as a felon for a crime that didn't hurt anyone, I don't have a problem with it.

I thought a lot of the questions were really difficult to answer. And I feel the same way you do about it - there are crimes for which people should have to forfeit their full rights as citizens.

asking these questions before the question reported would pull the "nos" up. It's almost a push poll in that they are implicitly listing the crimes these people were found guilty of. This may be why the numbers were higher than expected. It does mean that this should be looked at. Either they will have to sell the concept that the punishment should have a finite length - but these are not sympatheic people.

These were things I hadn't thought about before, and putting the question that way definitely changed the way I responded to it.

If you'd asked me before about voting rights for felons I would have said, sure, I'm in favor of restoring them. I wouldn't have thought much about the specifics - what kinds of felonies, etc. In fact, if someone commits murder, the idea that they might lose their voting rights doesn't trouble my conscience much (leaving aside the issue of wrongful conviction...)

But I suspect you're right, and the effect was a lot like a push poll.

Many laws unfairly target certain groups of people, either in their design or implementation. There is also a profit motive for certain groups in expanding the prison population, which can be helped by expanding the definition of "felony." (See: Prison-Industrial Complex.)

Regardless, I just don't see why someone who has broken a particular law should have any less say in what the laws should be. Voting is the most basic right of citizenship. If you permanently take away someone's right to vote, in my mind you are essentially revoking their citizenship.

OTOH, I don't think taxpayers should have to spend extra money on elections because of law breakers. So I don't think polling places should be required to be set up in prisons - if someone can't get to the poll because they are locked up (for a conviction), then tough shit. Of course that raises the question of what if someone is arrested and held unfairly. For that reason people being held prior to trial should probably have a means of voting.

70% of Americans don't understand this? Sigh. Seeing stuff like this sometimes makes me wonder why we even bother. But it also makes me appreciate John Kerry even more, because he understands these things that so many others don't.

Most think they can't, no matter where they live. But there's really only a few places where felons can't vote eventually. This should really be some kind of major activist campaign.

No disfranchisement for felony convictions (prisioners may vote):
ME, PR, VT

Voting restored after release from prison:
DC, HI, IL, IN, MA, MI, MT, NH, ND, OH, OR, PA, SD, UT

Voting restored after release from prison and completion of parole (people on probation may vote):
CA, CO, CT, NY

Voting restored after completion of prison, parole and probation:
AK, AR, GA, ID, KS, LA, MN, MO, NE*, NJ, NM, NC, OK, RI, SC, TX, WV, WI

Permanent disfranchisement for some felony convictions, unless government approves individual rights restoration:
AZ, DE, MD, MS, NV, TN, WA, WY

Permanent disfranchisement for all felony convictions, unless government approves individual rights restoration:
AL, FL, IA, KY, VA