Florida holds a special election for U.S. House, 20th district, in January 2022. The Republican nominee, Jason Mariner, was formerly in prison for a felony, and some Florida officials and reporters have been speculating that he is not eligible to run for Congress because he never asked for a gubernatorial decision that his rights have been restored. These officials and reporters are in error. State law cannot impede the eligibility of any citizen age 25 and above to run for U.S. House.
Mariner and his attorney have made this point in an article in The Floridian, an on-line Florida newspaper. See it here.
The 20th district is overwhelmingly Democratic, so the consensus of observers is that the Democratic nominee will win the election.
Society would benefit far more than it would lose if we would go back to what was standard operating procedure for dealing with crime and criminals before the late 19th century: any and all kinds of felons were held for no more than a week or two in jail before being publicly executed, and misdemeanor criminals were lent out by the county as indentured servants to prominent members of the community for the term of their sentence. It would also behoove us to bring back public whippings, especially for juveniles, youthful offenders, and female criminals.
I think you’re off by about a century Sam. The US Constitution outlawed cruel and unusual punishment in the late 1700s.
Before steam engines in mid 1700s —
existing was especially touch and go [ie periodic food famines / diseases, etc.]
— thus the *harsh* stuff for convicted criminals — having any jail was a luxury.
NOW – criminal *justice* system is BIG $$$ special interest biz – making jails, union jail guards, probation folks, welfare lawyers for accused / appeals, jail food/medical biz, etc, etc.
It wasn’t considered cruel and unusual punishment, Joshua. It was standard justice at the time the constitution was written, and continued to be for over a century afterwards. You can look it up, as can anyone else. Warehousing felons for long periods of time wasn’t common until the late 19th century in most places. The methods I described were standard.
As for cruel and unusual punishment, you can read up on medieval dungeons and torture, which were still quite common in Europe and the rest of the world in the 1770s.
Demo rep, correct. It’s a big money business that wastes a lot of resources that would be better spent on other things.
Add to that all the costs of crime, crime prevention, and fear of crime. Most crime is committed by recidivists, and would be eliminated under my proposal. Released felons foster a criminal culture on the streets. Jails and prisons are like college for criminals. Coddling criminals leaves few consequences to scare them away from a life of crime. Many continue to direct criminal networks both within jails and prisons and out on the streets while incarcerated.
By eliminating the vast majority of this, my proposal would drastically cut crime. Consider that most crimes aren’t even reported and thus don’t show up in official statistics. Crime, crime prevention, criminal justice and incarceration, and fear of crime are costing society far more than most people realize.
Everything I’ve described can be easily researched by anyone who cares to do so.
Also – Crime = economic destruction of older cities/suburbs —
more urban sprawl – big $$$ mortgages, etc.
prime example – Detroit
pop loss since 1950-1953 max = about 70 repeat 70 percent.
multi- $$$ billions of abandoned buildings – houses, stores, factories, skoools, etc.
Detroit regime went bankrupt in 2012 – can go bankrupt again at any time.
NOT sure if Detroit cops have let multi-sq miles be gang regimes.
He has a right to run. Why? The founding fathers did not want a charged crime/conviction to stand in the way of electing a candidate because they feared every candidate would try and get their opposition charged with a crime and convicted just to keep them off the ballot. That would lead to chaos. Anyway, he has served his sentence as payment for his crime back to society. He shouldn’t be punished forever.
Demo Rep, true. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
BDLU, can you quote founders on this matter? Given what I’ve read about history, it doesn’t seem that felons running for office would have been much of a concern, because felons were promptly executed soon after conviction. Thus, there wouldn’t have been much of a population of released felons to run for office.
Please show otherwise. If the concerns you describe were prevalent at the time, where were they addressed, say in Federalist and Antifederalist papers, etc?
I didn’t say anything about felons. You interpreted that and interjected it. I said any crime. The founding fathers did not want any criminal conviction prohibiting ballot access to a federal office. If it would have been allowed than getting your opponent convicted of a misdemeanor would have opened up the floodgates to denying ballot access.
That may be, but you have merely asserted your opinion again. The founders committed quite a few thoughts to paper, and many of those papers have more recently been typed or scanned into documents which are available through internet universal resource locators and their accompanying search engines. Can you find any that back up your claims about what the founders thought with their own words?
Perhaps this would also be the place to note again that Mr. Mariner was convicted of a felony, not a misdemeanor. However, even if your assertions about what the founders thought of those convicted of crimes running for office was limited to misdemeanors, thus excluding Mr. Mariner, the assertions would still require evidence that the founders actually thought what you day they did.
Rather than me tearing the Federalist Papers apart. Let’s throw the issue to Richard Winger for clarification.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2021/11/10/michigan-house-250-million-plan-recruit-keep-police-officers/6367731001/
Mich cop Rot — too many politically [in] correct BARBARIAN commies to count.
Many cops get trained in Detroit — and leave ASAP for suburbs or OUT of state.
Latest Detroit cop scandal – towing crimes – again and again contract machinations / bribes.
I don’t recall reading any arguments from the founders about letting criminals run for office. Admittedly it’s been a while.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S2-C2-1/ALDE_00001033/
SCOTUS re 1-2-2 — mention of olde 1787-1788 Federalist
Thanks, but I saw nothing in there specifically referencing any such thinking on the part of the founders as BDLU ascribes to them. I’ll take it as a given that they intended for the list of qualifications to be exclusive, and that thus Mr. Mariner is correct in his narrow claim. The part that I want to see proof of is “Why? The founding fathers did not want a charged crime/conviction to stand in the way of electing a candidate because they feared every candidate would try and get their opposition charged with a crime and convicted just to keep them off the ballot.” As far as I can see, this answer to the question of why is an unproven claim.
Unless someone has evidence to the contrary, the inclusion of released felons among those eligible to run for office was an accident, because released felons were not an issue at the time. Felons were generally and promptly executed. I contend that they should be again. In which case the list of qualifications would remain exclusive, as intended.
I’m an actual idiot!
https://www.theraleighregister.com/why-big-universities-are-doomed-affordablecollege.html
You finally admit it?
More sabotage of the BAN post / internet system –
likely a Fed felony.
What does that have to do with you finally admitting that you are an idiot? Pretty sure it’s not a federal felony to be an idiot, but if you want to stay on the safe side, go ahead and call the FBI and ask, retain counsel, or go to your nearest law library and crack the books. Well don’t actually crack them, because that could be an actual felony. Or at least a fine.