On December 16, U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Maryland) introduced a bill to provide that in federal elections, ex-felons can vote, no matter what state they live in. The bill does not have a number yet.
On January 5, 2011, U.S. House member John Conyers (D-Michigan) introduced the same idea, in HR 108. It has not made any headway this year.
Article One of the U.S. Constitution says that Congress may pass election laws for federal office. Most states permit ex-felons to register to vote, but sometimes they provide for difficult procedures for ex-felons to regain the right to register. And some states simply never permit ex-felons to register. The United States is the only nation that has such provisions. In most nations that have free elections, incarcerated felons may vote.
Can’t wait for Dem Rep’s contribution on this one!
@1 IKR? 🙂
Article 1, Section 4 does not say Congress may pass election laws for federal offices. It says it may regulate the time, place (House only), and manner of congressional elections.
Qualification of electors for Congress is specified in Article 1, Section 2 and the 17th Amendment.
Congress may not dictate the qualifications of electors for a State legislature. Even a befuddled Hugo Black (Oregon v Mitchell) recognized that. And the 8 other justices recognized that Congress could not set a separate qualification for federal elections. It was only because 4 other justices thought the 18-YO vote was an equal protection issue that the federal law was not overturned.
But are you going to get 5 justices to entertain an equal-protection claim; when the next section it said it was OK to deny suffrage to ex-felons without penalty in representation?
The 14th Amendment said it was OK to discriminate on the basis of age, race, literacy, wealth, residency, etc. so long as the state got dinged in its representation.
# 1 Sorry.
Mr. Riley in #3 beat me to much of it.
When did ANY SCOTUS MORON read
The Federalist 1787-1788
or even
The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 edited by Max Farrand (1911, 1937) ???
NO uniform definition of Elector in the 1787 Constitution due to racist stuff and slavery, elitist property qualifications, etc. in the different States.
See the debates on 14th Amdt, Sec. 2 in 1866 in the Congressional Globe.
The U.S.A. Constitution is almost a piece of legal toilet paper due to the SCOTUS appointed party hack robot MORONS.
Democracy NOW
Uniform definition of Elector in ALL of the U.S.A. — including D.C. and the U.S.A. occupied colonies.
P.R. and nonpartisan App.V. — to also ELECT SCOTUS folks who have SOME legal history brain cells.
#3, the reason I said Article One of the Constitution gives congress the authority to regulate federal elections, instead of just congressional elections, is because the US Supreme court interpreted Article One that way in Oregon v Mitchell. And all the bills that have passed since, regulating elections, have applied to presidential elections as well as congressional elections. That includes not only the 18-year vote, passed by Congress in 1970 and upheld in Oregon v Mitchell, but the Help America Vote Act, and the 2009 act about overseas absentee ballots, and the 1993 Motor Voter Law mandating postcard registration forms for states that don’t have election-day registration.
And on the issue of ex-felons, the 14th amendment does not say it is “OK” for the states to ban them from voting. It says that if states prohibit any male citizens of voting age from voting, other than for the reason that they are ex-felons or felons, then those states should lose representation. It does not follow logically that it is therefore permitted for states to ban ex-felons and felons from voting.
Oregon v. Mitchell — one more perversion by the then *politically correct* SCOTUS.
The 27th Amdt overruled Oregon — about like 14th Amdt, Sec. 1 overruling Dred Scott v. Sandford.
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14th Amdt, Sec. 2
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, [[[ except for participation in rebellion, or other crime ]]], the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
——–
Such language was worked on from Dec 1865-June 1866.
See the many meetings of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction about the matter — since the ex-slave States would be getting a HIGHER percentage of U.S.A. Reps and Electoral College votes
— the 3/5 slave stuff in Art. I, Sec. 2 BLASTED OUT by the 13th Amdt the very hard way — COST — about 350,000 DEAD Union Army troops.
NO mention of felony in 14th Amdt, Sec. 2.
Did the 1866 Congress MORONS possibly NOT detect that the EVIL rotted States would have the loss of the *right to vote* due to all sorts of even MINOR NON-Felony crimes and selective prosecutions — i.e. a black ex-slave throws a piece of trash paper on the ground = NO right to vote ??? Duh.
The EVIL DEVIL morons know how to find ALL of the loopholes.
See Hitler in 1933 — using the FATAL loophole in the 1919 Germany Constitution permitting the suspension of the Germany Bill of Rights in an emergency (created by Hitler).
Any of the usual suspects still claiming that D.C. is a State to get some Donkey U.S.A. Reps and Senators ???
How about those poor suffering occupied colonies ???
Puerto Rico, Guam, etc.
#5 Read what Oregon v Mitchell actually said:
MR. JUSTICE BLACK concluded that: 1. Congress has the authority to permit 18-year-old citizens to vote in national elections, under Art. I, 4,
MR. JUSTICE HARLAN concluded that: 2. The Fourteenth Amendment was not intended to restrict the authority of the States to allocate their political power as they see fit and neither that Amendment nor any other provision of the Constitution authorizes Congress to set voter qualifications in state or local elections.
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS concluded that: 1. The authority of Congress to fix at 18 the minimum age for the civil right of voting in national elections derives from the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment…
MR. JUSTICE BRENNAN, MR. JUSTICE WHITE, and MR. JUSTICE MARSHALL concluded that: 1. Congress has the power to forbid the disenfranchisement in national elections of persons over the age of 18 because of their age, in order to enforce the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
MR. JUSTICE STEWART, joined by THE CHIEF JUSTICE and MR. JUSTICE BLACKMUN, concluded that: 2. Congress has no power to confer the right to vote in state or local elections on citizens from the ages of 18 to 21 since under the Constitution only the States have the power to set voting qualifications.
In Justice Stevens’s dissent in Tashjiam he stated: “The Court’s reliance on the holding in Oregon v. Mitchell is equally misguided. That case tested the constitutionality of certain parts of the Voting Rights Act Amendments of 1970, 84 Stat. 314, including the section that lowered the minimum age of voters in both state and federal elections from 21 to 18. Four Members of the Court concluded that Congress had no such power; four other Members of the Court concluded that the entire statute was valid. Thus, the conclusions of all eight of those Justices were consistent with the proposition that the Constitution requires the same qualifications for state and federal elections. Only Justice Black concluded that the statute was invalid insofar as it applied to state elections but valid insofar as it applied to federal elections.”
You are as misguided as Thurgood Marshall was in his opinion in Tashjian
HAVA is a manner regulation, just like the 1872 law that required use of paper ballots.
Motor Voter is a manner regulation. You don’t think it is a voter qualification law do you?
UOCAVA (1986) and MOVE (2009) are manner regulations, and to a certain extent time regulations.
Read the debate on applying the apportionment clause of the 14th Amendment, following the 1870 census. A representative or senator noted that his state of Massachusetts did not let illiterates and imbeciles vote, and that it was not only OK, but a good idea. But he agreed that Massachusetts should be penalized in its representation, and actually went through the calculation – which happily did not make any difference.
It does logically follow that if States are penalized for excluding certain persons, even though that exclusion is believed to be reasonable; that it is reasonable to exclude other persons where there is no penalty. It it were not that way, then States would be given an incentive to not only let felons vote but also traitors.
There of course is not really such a person as an ex-felon.
# 8 In England status still means something.
After a criminal has had his/her punishment, it is slander/libel to refer to such person as an ex-criminal.
i.e. the person is totally restored to being a free normal person.
Here of course, due to SCOTUS perversions of the 1st Amdt, reputations mean about zero.
Ex felons, ex whatever – nonstop slander and libel — see the moron late night TV shows.
———
LOOK at the TWO main speeches in 1866 about the 14th Amdt -one House, one Senate — since the Oregon SCOTUS folks were too lazy to do so — i.e. DEMAND both sides look at the speeches and report back to the court.
14th Amdt, Sec. 1 has ZERO to do with the definition of Elector in ANY State.
The MAIN emphasis in both speeches is about 14th Amdt, Sec. 2 — to get REAL Democracy for adult citizen males into ALL of the EVIL rotted States, north and south, east and west.
Sorry females – until 1920.