Class A felons are not really up for debate. No candidate who's even remotely electable would support voting rights for this class of felons.

But I'm with IceMage on the more general case of felon voting rights:

They committed crimes so severe that society, through the criminal justice system, decided to strip them of their personal freedom and countless other civil rights for some limited amount of time. Why should the right to vote be an exception? And why should those who broke the law in severe enough fashion to be convicted of a felony have a say in making these laws, why should they have a say in the future direction of the country?

But this should, of course, be limited to felons currently serving prison time. I'm all for restoring voting rights as soon as someone has served his time, i.e. is out of prison and no longer on parole or probation. And I wouldnt be terribly against voting rights for persons imprisoned for non-violent misdemeanors. (Do violent misdemeanors even exist in US law?)

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Apr 26 2019 12:56pm

one good reason is because a key difference on doing jail/prison time is quality of representation. Brock Turner comes to mind.

it's a good argument for a system with no/few inequalities, and that's not what our system is. we have a system that gets it wrong a lot.

logically tho prison = 1 year or more jail time. so if i start my sentence on the day of voting i have 75% of the presidency not in prison.

conversely, 75% of the persons sentenced to 1 year in prison will not miss the election and get to decide on 100% of the presidency while spending 25% of it in prison.

so the luck factor goes in both directions.
just as it usually does when it comes to things like missing your kid's birthday, christmas, the super bowl and so on. (for sentences which are not exactly an integer number of years, which is the majority of them.)

Bold, but I'm not 100% sure on the details. Maybe certain crimes should warrant you losing your voting rights for life.

If so maybe, what crimes would warrant that? Class A felonies, like snipa has mentioned?

Agreed, it is hard to make a moral stance on something with variance that undercuts your morals.

either you're 25% moral or 75% moral, for this simple example.

No, I wouldn't want it to be that broad.

Realistically, the felons I would want barred from voting for life will be in prison for life, so I guess I would support any felon who leaves prison having their voting rights restored.

Does this include people who have murdered? Raped?

Yes. If we're allowing them to return to society, they should have a voice.

What does it matter?