Armed with a study that the inability of felons to vote tipped the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush and helped Republicans gain control of the U.S. Senate, Democrats are moving to restore the voting rights of criminals (or as Hillary calls them “ex-offenders” or as we at Independent Sources like to think of them as the “lawfully challenged.”). The reason, criminals tend to vote for Democrats, and in close elections there might just be enough of them to alter the outcome.

As it currently stands, states have the right to decide whether or not criminals get to vote. But without federal interference, it is unlikely important swing states like Florida will willingly give murders, rapists, and so forth the right to vote. Ignoring over two centuries of federalism (i.e., let the states decide issues like this), Hillary and company want to force states to change their laws. Proponents like to play the “race” card and when that happens you can bet that scofflaws like Marion Barry (our favorite crack-smoking-mayor-turned-convict-turned-mayor) will turn out. In fact, it was reported that Mayor Barry’s campaign targeted the ex-offender community in his last election. (ed. note., I can just imagine the campaign bumper stickers “Use a Gun, Go to Prison, Vote Barry”).

There are some very troubling aspects to this thinking. First, instead of making their agenda more amenable to the majority of voters in this country, the Democrats are moving to make a new majority, one that is more amenable to their platform. Second is the thinking that by serving 5 years of a 15 year sentence a convicted murder/rapist/you name it has “paid their debt to society” and should be completely absolved of their sins. Yes, they have served whatever time the system has set (right or wrong) but this doesn’t mean that it is as if the crime never happened. Try saying this to the victims or the families of the victims. Did the perpetrators pay restitution, did they admit their guilt, did they behave in prison? When you choose, yes choose, a criminal path, some things are lost for good (much like the life of a murder victim).

Hillary’s motives are partisan politics at their most base level and pretending otherwise is felonious insincerity.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 9th, 2005 at 5:21 pm by Insider and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.