On October 7, the European Court of Human Rights ruled 12-5 that prisoners must be allowed to vote. The European charter guarantees the “right to free elections”, and the court construed that to mean that prisoners do not lose voting rights. The case had been brought by a British prisoner serving a term for manslaughter (the crime was committed in 1980).
This seems like a common sense decision, yet in the u.s. groups are reluctant to ask for more than allowing ex-prisoners to be allowed to vote. Figure, why when only half of citizens perform thier “civic duty” to participate in elections do we turn away voters who we claim to be “reforming” into good citizens?