Should prisoners have the right to vote?

• A

  Alex1mo ago

  Stripping the vote doesn't deter a single crime, it just creates a class of people the system can ignore. Taxation and laws still apply to them — so should a voice.

  183Reply
• R

  Riley1mo ago

  I'm a corrections officer, been one for 11 years. You want my honest take? The guys I see every day aren't monsters. Most are people who made terrible decisions, often in terrible circumstances. Treating them like they're permanently subhuman doesn't make anyone safer. It makes re-entry harder and recidivism higher. Letting them vote would at minimum make them feel like they still belong to something worth returning to.

  178Reply
  • ZL

    Zara L.1mo ago

    Hard disagree with the CO above. Feeling like you 'belong to something' is not the government's job to engineer through voting rights. Society has to be able to say some behavior puts you outside certain civic privileges. That's not dehumanizing, it's consequence.

    44Reply
• MB

  Morgan B.3w ago

  I did 26 months. I'm out now, I've been out seven years, I pay taxes, I coach youth soccer, and I still can't vote in my state because I'm on parole. I have less civic voice than a 18-year-old who's never paid a dollar of taxes or contributed anything. Explain to me again what lesson I'm supposed to be learning.

  162Reply
  • F2

    Feli 213w ago

    The lesson is don't commit crimes in the first place. Harsh? Maybe. But actions have consequences that last. Welcome to adulthood.

    29Reply
    • N

      Noah3w ago

      Responding to someone's personal story of rehabilitation with 'welcome to adulthood' is genuinely one of the coldest things I've read on here. That person coaches youth soccer. What more do you need.

      104Reply
• YT

  Yuki T.3d ago

  Here's what nobody is saying: in the US, prisoners are counted in census data for the district where they're incarcerated, not where they're from. So rural districts with big prisons get MORE political representation because of the prison population — but those same prisoners can't vote. The community that actually sent them there gets diluted representation. If you're against prisoner voting on principle, are you also willing to change how we count them in the census? Because right now we're literally using their bodies for political power while denying them any.

  157Reply
• C

  Casey1mo ago

  My father was incarcerated for four years for a nonviolent drug offense. During that time, two elections passed. He paid taxes on prison labor wages — yes, they taxed those — and had zero say in the lawmakers who set sentencing guidelines that defined his life. That's not justice, that's just cruelty dressed up in procedure.

  147Reply
• F

  Feli1w ago

  My uncle spent 8 years inside for a nonviolent drug offense. Came out, got his life together, pays taxes, coaches youth football on weekends. Can't vote in our state. Explain to me with a straight face how that makes society safer or more just. I'll wait.

  143Reply
• N

  Noah1mo ago

  The framing of 'earning back' rights assumes the system that took them was fair to begin with. When Black men are incarcerated at five times the rate of white men for comparable offenses, stripping voting rights isn't neutral — it's targeted disenfranchisement with extra steps.

  134Reply
• A

  Alex1w ago

  at what point does someone EVER get their full humanity back in people's eyes. you serve time. you get out. you're still marked. you can't vote, can't get certain jobs, can't live in certain places. the sentence never actually ends. at what point is the debt considered paid because from where I'm standing it never is

  121Reply
• Y_

  Yuki _x3d ago

  I keep seeing 'they forfeited the social contract' repeated like it's a legal principle or a philosophical axiom when it's actually just a talking point someone invented and everyone just... accepted. The social contract argument for voting disenfranchisement has no coherent endpoint. Speeding is also breaking the law. Fraud. Tax evasion. Should all of those cost you your vote permanently? Nobody actually believes that. So it's not really about the social contract — it's about which crimes and which people we've decided to mark.

  119Reply
• D

  Drew2w ago

  Unpopular opinion: the entire concept of 'civil death' — the historical legal idea that criminals lose all civil rights — was explicitly designed to extend slavery after the 13th Amendment through mass incarceration. Stripping voting rights is a direct descendant of that doctrine. You are not obligated to defend the legacy of that system.

  117Reply
  • N

    Noah2w ago

    Douglas Blackmon's 'Slavery by Another Name.' Michelle Alexander's 'The New Jim Crow.' Ruffin v. Commonwealth, 1871, where a Virginia court literally described a convict as 'a slave of the state.' It's not obscure. It's just not taught.

    96Reply
    • T2

      Taylor 212w ago

      Rights can be suspended by due process of law. That's not a controversial legal position — we do it with liberty itself (imprisonment), with certain Second Amendment rights (felon in possession laws), with free movement (parole conditions). The question isn't whether rights can ever be conditioned; the question is whether THIS right should be.

      52Reply
      • Q

        Quinn2w ago

        It prevents them from voting for softer sentencing laws that benefit themselves. That's the argument, right? That prisoners would just vote in whoever promises to release them.

        31Reply
• L

  Liam6d ago

  I've voted in every election since I was 18. Never missed one. I also volunteered at a prison literacy program for three years. The men and women I worked with were more engaged with policy, more knowledgeable about legislation affecting their communities, than most people I know on the outside. The argument that prisoners are somehow too disconnected from civic life to vote meaningfully is nonsense I can demolish from personal experience.

  112Reply
• S

  Sam1w ago

  I've worked in criminal defense for 15 years. The number of people who are technically 'felons' for things that wouldn't raise an eyebrow in a different zip code or income bracket would genuinely shock most people reading this. Voting disenfranchisement isn't falling evenly on society. It's targeting one specific slice of it with extraordinary precision.

  109Reply
  • T

    Taylor1w ago

    What percentage of the incarcerated population in the US is there for violent crimes? Go look it up before you answer. The number is lower than you think. Significantly.

    88Reply
• T2

  Taylor 211mo ago

  Every time someone says 'they forfeited their rights' I want to ask: who decides which rights? Why THAT right? Voting is the one right that directly determines who has power over you. Taking it away from the imprisoned is incredibly convenient for the people doing the imprisoning. Think about that for two seconds.

  98Reply
• KK

  Kofi K.2w ago

  Norway, Denmark, most of Western Europe allows it. Their recidivism rates are a fraction of ours. Their crime rates are lower. Maybe — just maybe — treating incarcerated people as civic participants worth rehabilitating produces better outcomes than treating them as waste products to be stored.

  93Reply
  • M9

    Marco 922w ago

    comparing Norway to the US in criminal justice is like comparing a bicycle to a 747. different scale, different history, different demographics, different everything. these comparisons are useless

    38Reply
    • RL

      Reese L.2w ago

      That's a very convenient way to avoid learning anything from international evidence. 'Too different to compare' is just 'I don't want to update my priors.'

      61Reply
• CM

  Casey M.1mo ago

  okay but can someone explain to me why we trust a convicted felon's judgment on literally everything EXCEPT voting? they can get married, have kids, run a business, practice religion, make medical decisions — but the ballot box is where we draw the line? that's not principled, that's just vibes

  91Reply
• R

  Riley3w ago

  Here's the angle nobody's discussing: prisoner populations are concentrated in rural districts. When prisoners are counted for census purposes but can't vote, those rural (often conservative) districts get inflated political representation without the actual votes of the people being counted. It's representation without accountability. That should bother people across the political spectrum.

  88Reply
  • YT

    Yuki T.3w ago

    This is called prison gerrymandering and it is a real documented phenomenon. Thank you for bringing it up. It gets almost zero mainstream attention and it should get a LOT more.

    71Reply
    • J

      Jordan3w ago

      lol suddenly everyone cares about voting rights when there's a partisan angle to exploit. be honest about your motivations people

      33Reply
      • D_

        Drew _x3w ago

        My motivations are that I think the government shouldn't be able to concentrate power by warehousing human beings in rural counties. That's not partisan, that's structural criticism. You can disagree with the policy conclusion while acknowledging the mechanism is real.

        56Reply
• R_

  Reese _x1w ago

  ok but norway lets prisoners vote and has one of the lowest recidivism rates on earth. the US strips rights and has one of the highest. at some point you have to ask if the punitive approach is actually accomplishing anything besides making people feel righteous

  88Reply
  • OR

    Omar R.1w ago

    The Norway comparison drives me insane. Norway is a small, wealthy, ethnically homogenous country with entirely different social conditions. You cannot just drop their prison policy into America and expect the same results. This argument gets used constantly and it's intellectually lazy.

    54Reply
  • O

    Omar1w ago

    counterpoint to the norway guy: japan also has extremely low recidivism and is famously brutal on prisoners. so maybe its not about voting rights at all and the correlation people keep citing is spurious. just a thought

    31Reply
• T

  Taylor2w ago

  I'm genuinely undecided on this and I feel like I'm not allowed to say that. Both sides have points I can't shake. Voting IS tied to being a member of the civic community in some meaningful sense. But the application of who loses it is so clearly racially and economically skewed that I can't pretend the system is applying the principle fairly. Can we fix the system first before defending the principle?

  85Reply
  • OL

    Omar L.2w ago

    Source on the 13th Amendment connection? I keep seeing this claim but I'd like to read the actual historical scholarship rather than take it on faith in a comment section.

    41Reply
• H

  Hana1mo ago

  Nope. Commit serious harm to society, lose your say in running it. Pretty simple math.

  83Reply
  • R

    Riley1mo ago

    The 'social contract' argument collapses the moment you realize the state also has obligations under that contract — adequate legal representation, humane conditions, rehabilitation programs — and routinely violates all of them. You can't invoke the contract selectively.

    112Reply
• R

  Riley2d ago

  I used to be firmly against this until I read about Maine and Vermont — the only two US states where prisoners never lost the vote. I spent a long time trying to find evidence of the terrible consequences I assumed would follow. I couldn't find any. Not saying that proves the policy is right. But it did make me admit my opposition was based on assumption rather than evidence. That was uncomfortable.

  83Reply
• M

  Marco2w ago

  The fact that Maine and Vermont — both small, largely rural, not exactly left-wing strongholds — have allowed prisoner voting for decades without any observable political catastrophe is the most underrated data point in this entire debate.

  79Reply
• PL

  Priya L.6d ago

  so a man who murdered someone's child gets to help elect the DA who prosecutes cases like his? you want me to just be fine with that? this isn't abstract for everyone.

  79Reply
  • D

    Diego6d ago

    The emotional weight of that is real and I won't dismiss it. But laws aren't written for the worst imaginable case — they're written for the general rule. We don't ban car ownership because drunk drivers kill people. The existence of terrible individual cases doesn't make a blanket policy right.

    94Reply
• Z

  Zara1w ago

  I'll be direct: every major democracy that's stripped voting rights from large portions of its population has used exactly this language about 'those who forfeit their social contract.' That rhetoric has a history. It doesn't end well. I'm not calling anyone a fascist. I'm saying the logic has been used as a tool before and we should be clear-eyed about that.

  76Reply
  • M

    Marco1w ago

    This is the real question nobody wants to sit with. If we genuinely believe in rehabilitation and 'paying your debt to society,' the debt needs to have a definable end. Otherwise we're not running a justice system — we're running a permanent underclass management system.

    155Reply
• I

  Iris2w ago

  whoever thinks voting is a privilege and not a right hasn't thought carefully about what a privilege actually is. privileges are granted by authorities. rights exist independent of authority. the entire point of democratic governance is that sovereignty rests in the people — including the imprisoned people you'd rather forget about

  74Reply
  • DK

    Drew K.2w ago

    Fine distinction, but here's the thing — felon firearm prohibitions are at least theoretically tied to a specific safety concern. What's the safety concern with a ballot? What harm does the prisoner vote actually prevent?

    68Reply
    • P

      Priya2w ago

      By that logic we should strip voting rights from anyone who might vote in self-interest. There goes the entire electorate.

      143Reply
      • I

        Iris2w ago

        respectfully, being a public defender who thinks the system is unfair doesn't make prisoner voting right. those are two separate questions. fix prosecutorial overreach, sure. but that's a different reform than handing ballots to people serving for violent crimes

        37Reply
• MS

  Maya S.4w ago

  Rehabilitative justice is supposed to be the goal, right? Keeping someone connected to civic life is literally a rehabilitation tool. Studies on this exist. But sure, let's keep doing the thing that demonstrably increases recidivism because it feels like punishment.

  67Reply
  • K

    Kofi4w ago

    studies studies studies. can we just use common sense for five minutes? person kills someone's family member, victim's family doesn't get to vote that year because they're grieving and can't function, but the killer gets a ballot? i don't need a study to tell me that's wrong

    55Reply
    • N

      Nina4w ago

      The victim's family absolutely can vote. Grief doesn't strip your voter registration. That comparison doesn't hold up to even minimal scrutiny.

      73Reply
• K

  Kofi1w ago

  Voting is not a human right. It's a civic right. There IS a difference. You can believe fully in someone's humanity and still say that participating in governance requires a level of civic standing. These are not the same argument.

  67Reply
• M

  Maya4d ago

  Genuinely asking: if someone is serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole, what is the actual argument for giving them a vote? They will never live under the consequences of an election outcome. I'm open to being convinced but I'd like someone to actually make the case specifically for that group.

  47Reply
  • H

    Hana4d ago

    They still have family on the outside. They still have communities affected by policy. Prison conditions themselves are shaped by elections. The idea that someone's interests completely evaporate when they can never leave is just wrong. Prisoners vote on behalf of everything they still care about, same as the rest of us.

    61Reply
• OT

  Omar T.1mo ago

  You broke the social contract, you lose its privileges until you've paid your debt. Voting is a right of citizens in good standing, and you forfeited that. Earn it back on release.

  31Reply
• N

  Noah1mo ago

  Some countries let prisoners vote and the sky didn't fall. Funny how the places most scared of it are the ones that lock up the most people. Connect those dots.

  31Reply
• R2

  Riley 211mo ago

  There's a difference between someone in for unpaid fines and someone in for the worst crimes imaginable, and 'all or nothing' voting laws pretend that difference doesn't exist.

  24Reply
• R

  Reese3d ago

  nope. hard disagree with the whole framing. crime isn't a political act, punishment shouldn't be either. keep elections out of prisons full stop.

  22Reply

More debates people can't stop arguing about