Aside from the racism and the moral imperative of allowing all adult citizens in a democracy to vote, anyone (like Buttigieg) who says prisoners shouldn't be allowed to vote is literally saying they want to gerrymander districts to make it easier for Republicans to win.
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It's true that allowing incarcerated people to vote benefits Democrats compared to the status quo, but only because the status quo is ridiculously biased in favor of Republicans. So this isn't - or shouldn't need to be - a partisan issue; it's creating a level playing field.
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I agree with the Census Bureau's reasoning that prisoners should be counted in the districts where they're incarcerated, not their hometowns, though I could be convinced otherwise. But that makes it all the more important to let incarcerated people vote in the first place.
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Counting incarcerated people in their hometowns would be inconsistent with how the Census counts literally every other group of people. They'd be counted in a place where they're not actually resident. It's particularly weird for people serving long or even lifetime sentences.
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Incarcerated people should be counted in the districts where they're incarcerated, and have their voting rights restored. This means that politicians at the local, state, and federal levels would have to consider them as constituents and pay attention to their needs as well.
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I'm fairly certain there is no Congressional district where prisoners make up anything close to a majority of the population. (The largest single prison in the US (Angola) houses 6,300 prisoners, in a district of 750,000 people. Though some districts may have multiple prisons).
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I wouldn't be surprised, though, if there are districts for state-level races where incarcerated people make up a majority of the population. Angola houses 6,300 prisoners, which is 40% of the population of the county (parish)!
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Let's spell that out: there is a county in Louisiana where only *three-fifths* of the population is eligible to vote, because the rest are incarcerated prisoners (disproportionately Black). The voting-eligible population is heavily disproportionately white. Let that sink in.
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This is where any push for restoring voting rights to incarcerated people will encounter real resistance: it would have a modest impact on Senate, Congressional, and state-wide races, but it would have a *massive* impact on local races (state legislature, country, and city).
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This approach to rigging democracy isn't new by any means. England is arguably the pioneer of the practice (with the rotten boroughs). Prisons are an American adaptation of British proprietorial boroughs.https://twitter.com/Czhorat/status/1121051706442375168 …
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Love those rotten boroughs!https://twitter.com/everett_hamner/status/1121189160667242499?s=19 …
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I didn't think I would need to say this, but, to anyone saying "ex-convicts can't vote either in most states; they deserve the right to vote first": Both currently- and formerly-incarcerated people deserve the right to vote. Both are necessary and imperative.
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Incarceration should not have any impact on one's basic rights as a citizen (including voting rights). Period.
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Restoring voting rights to ex-convicts is not a "stepping stone" towards restoring voting rights to prisoners. Many rhetorical arguments people make for restoring voting rights to ex-convicts actually reinforce the myth that incarcerated people shouldn't have the right to vote.
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"They've already paid their debt to society" Well, many incarcerated people don't owe society any debt in the first place. They're just victims of the racist prison-industrial complex. Either way, having finished your sentence isn't the criterion for deserving voting rights.
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The largest prison in the US is named "Angola", after the plantation that it used to be (before slavery was abolished). That plantation was named "Angola" after the country in Africa, which is where most of the slaves on the plantation had come from.https://twitter.com/glasswyrm/status/1121451964720664581 …
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The US isn't alone in disenfranchising prisoners. The UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Iceland, Poland, Malta, Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Portugal, Norway, Greece, Moldova, Austria, Hungary, and Monaco all have laws preventing some or all prisoners from voting.
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I ran out of space listing the majority-white countries which prevent some or all prisoners from voting. For example, Australia also prevents prisoners serving 3+ years from voting. Canada had a blanket ban until 2002. There are also some more European countries as well.
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