Posted: August 15th, 2022

Felon Voting Rights

The Undoing of Social Justice System In Democratic America
Topic: Felon Voting Rights
Should felons have their right to vote restored?If so, under what conditions (if any)?Please answer this question and explain your answer, including any relevant Biblical principles

Prisons fundamentally within the United States are viewed as corrective facilities. When a person is taken to jail, they are deemed within the society as unmanageable and through jail, they get to be corrected and shown their wrongs in order to be right within the society; essentially prisons are a rehabilitation facility that base their fundamental principles on morals and societal value system. As such, it makes sense that when a person is assigned 10 year-jail sentence, at the end of that 10 years, they should have been rehabilitated and with a clean slate, ready to live a new life. For there should be no limitation and as such, they should be able to get their jobs back and be able to vote. Getting to be denied this in essence speaks to the fact that the society does not trust they have changed and continually beats the main point of having a prison in the first place if they will be tormented for their crimes. That said, not all people reform after they serve their term in prison and not all people jailed are guilty of the crime they were assigned as such, the complexity of the matter creates a sense of lack of fulfilment on the part of the prison towards the general sense of rehabilitation of the person within his context. Both these factors affect the overall outcome of the prison system and create a sense of inability and temporal punishment for the person. This leads me to the main point that states that prisoners should be able to vote after they have served their sentence, since they have been deemed through societal moral systems encompassed within the constitution and their value system to have been rehabilitated.
The bible bases most of its principles, that define the relations between men on forgiveness. From a religious perspective, revenge is not for man but for the Lord and showing compromise within this regard, by allowing felons to vote goes a long way in indicating the values from this lesson. Hearth identifies that most people across the world hold the perspective that punishment is usually about payback and revenge for wrong action done, retribution for sin and not about the restoration and rehabilitation of the perverted ways of a person . This is a perspective that permeates through all societal structures and has been able to manifest within most people’s core values including the felons. As such, being caught and taken to prison does not come to signify a turning point, but instead to show that they could have evaded the law better and prison serves as a temporary transit terminal for their perverted actions. The bible categorically identifies that no sinner beyond the position of redemption for their action, the action of Jesus dying for all of humanity . As such, Jesus’ actions are reason enough that he sacrificed the ultimate form of punishment in order to create a forgiving atmosphere and this is what the religious perspective should adopt. In this regard, the constitution establishes that a person who has served their jail sentence and has been released has served their debt to society. As such, ProCon establishes that continued disenfranchisement by blocking their ability to vote morally marginalizes them and seeks to show a luck of trust in the system . Essentially, the power to change man should not be through man, who will seek retribution but left to God, holding out the ex-convict’s power to vote is an element of seeking retribution fundamentally going against the bible and taking revenge into your own hands.
From a political perspective, the aspect of voting is a means through which majority of the members of the community, get their voices heard. Voting can be about one of everything, it could focus on a political, economic, cultural or social aspect of the community. As such, blocking a large and integral part of the community from voting acts to disenfranchise the community’s voice. Why is this bad? In the context of the US Manza and Uggen identify that as much as the laws on incarceration on paper remain to be racially neutral, historical and current empirical figures identify that they continually are not racially neutral as racial relations underlies the practice. As such, black and minorities remain to be targeted and jailed, as such, there is a larger sense that by this, they are stifled and limited when trying to establish their voice through the civic action of voting. This ensures underrepresentation and continually creates a system of oppression based on the fact that their key issues cannot be addressed within the mainstream society.
America is a democracy and the right to vote is what defines and sets apart America as a democracy. Denying someone the right to vote and calling them American at the same time defeats the purpose as it inherently goes against the American values decreed under the constitutional order. Frankovic identifies that statistically Americans deem America synonymous to democracy and the values of democracy are outlined by the power to vote with 71% of Americans stating that voting is inherent to the US democracy. As such, the ability not to vote, categorically denies them from being identified as American and only works to create a sense of disenfranchisement which categorically stifles power to achieve consensus when discussing important issues within the society.
Voting is a right for all who are defined as American. It is a key definition of the American nature and as such, all people should vote. Within the religious perspective, voting for felons is an act of trust within the power of the Lord and placing him as the only person who is capable of undoing injustice within the society. The prison system, should be viewed as places of rehabilitation and not a place to earn retribution for wrong done. Politically, voting denies communities greater sense of representation and continually perpetuates discrimination.

Bibliography
Frankovic, Kathy. “Should Felons Be Allowed to Vote in America?” YouGov | What the World Thinks. Last modified May 7, 2019. https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/05/07/should-felons-be-allowed-vote-america.
Hearth, Katey. “Felon Voting Rights: a Christian Issue?” Mission Network News. Last modified July 30, 2014. https://www.mnnonline.org/news/felon-voting-rights-christian-issue/.
Manza, Jeff, and Christopher Uggen. “Punishment and Democracy: Disenfranchisement of Nonincarcerated Felons in the United States.” Perspectives on Politics 2, no. 03 (n.d.), 491-501. doi:10.1017/s1537592704040290.
ProCon. “Should Felons Who Have Completed Their Sentence (Incarceration, Probation, and Parole) Be Allowed to Vote?” Felon Voting – ProCon.org. Last modified 2019. https://felonvoting.procon.org/.

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