If You Want to Vote, Don’t Commit a Felony

Question 2 on Rhode Island’s ballot this November is a measure backed by the Right to Vote campaign that would allow for the enfranchisement of all felons once they have completed their prison term, eliminating the previous requirement that a person serve out his or her parole or probation before being allowed to vote. Opponents of Question 2 argue that it is undesirable as a society to have ex-felons voting so quickly. More broadly, the main criticisms of Question 2 and the Right to Vote campaign are that criminals represent a special class of citizens whose voting rights can justifiably be denied, that giving ex-felons the vote right out of prison would not necessarily encourage reintegration, and that the racial and social concerns that the Right to Vote campaign is founded upon have no basis in fact. While some proposals, such as reducing overly long probation sentences, hold water, the Right to Vote campaign goes too far in its correction of the problem, leading to a greater problem still.

“But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.”

Thus, felon disenfranchisement has a strong constitutional basis. This clause was included in the Amendment for an obvious reason: it does not serve the interests of a democratic state to allow members of society whose actions destroy democratic order (criminals) to vote on important civic issues. Why should a murderer just released from prison have power in the electorate when important issues such as police enforcement are being considered? Felon disenfranchisement until the completion of probation or parole affords a democracy a rare opportunity to separate out the wheat from the chaff, the desirables from the undesirables. Other proposed options to achieve this effect in history have nearly always been dictatorial in nature, and thus illegitimate. In few situations is the choice so clear as to what option will result in a healthier state.

It is appropriate now to address a criticism of the probationary and parole system in Rhode Island which is indeed legitimate. Speaking with Dan Schleifer, who works for the Rhode Island Family Life Center in promotion of Right to Vote, I found that probation and parole sentences in Rhode Island are quite long relative toother states. Parole, of course, is a conditional release under intensive supervision, while probation is an earned release with less strict supervision than parole. According to Dan, Rhode Island has longer than average probation sentences, particularly for drug crimes, in which the upper probation limit can be around thirty years! There is a great deal of variance across probations, but in general they range from five to fifteen years for all crimes. When you consider the possibility that a young man who commits a minor drug offense at age eighteen might not be reenfranchised until he is forty-eight or more, it becomes clear that there is a lot of work to be done in adjusting probations to fit the crime committed. Murderers and rapists should, quite simply, lose the right forever. However, minor drug offenses should receive only a few years of probation before the vote is restored. These are reasonable proposals to correct imbalances in the system, but they preserve the system itself, for it serves a noble purpose.