You know, on balance though, I think I’m glad that being a convicted felon doesn’t preclude one from being elected president. I’ve gone back and forth on it a lot, but I think it is for the best.
Can you elaborate? My knee-jerk reaction is to be against it, but I haven’t thought about it a whole lot and I’d be interested to know why you have decided on the opposite.
In this case it seems easy to be against it because a widely unpopular candidate is the one being prosecuted.
However, allowing felons to run for office precludes the ability for the government to silence political dissidents by making up laws/falsifying evidence that they can be imprisoned for.
The risk of a Trump presidency is still on the table, but the US can avoid situations like what happened to Navalny in Russia as well.
In the 1920 election, Eugene Debs campaigned as the socialist nominee for president from prison, having been imprisoned for advocating draft dodging. That is the sort of candidate I would still support, even from behind bars.
Just because you’re a felon doesn’t mean you’re not a citizen and part of the country. As such, you should be able to partake in democracy in all possible ways as well.
I really dislike this punitive mindset of completely ruining someone’s life for being convicted of a crime. People make mistakes, but we don’t want to exclude them from society, we want to reform them and bring them back in. So yeah, I think, even excluding all this political bs, that no person should have their right to vote or run taken from them.
Oh yeah, I agree with you. I certainly think felons should have a vote. Hadn’t really occurred to me to include running for office in the same category.
You know, on balance though, I think I’m glad that being a convicted felon doesn’t preclude one from being elected president. I’ve gone back and forth on it a lot, but I think it is for the best.
Absolutely it is, see Nelson Mandela for instance
Can you elaborate? My knee-jerk reaction is to be against it, but I haven’t thought about it a whole lot and I’d be interested to know why you have decided on the opposite.
In this case it seems easy to be against it because a widely unpopular candidate is the one being prosecuted.
However, allowing felons to run for office precludes the ability for the government to silence political dissidents by making up laws/falsifying evidence that they can be imprisoned for.
The risk of a Trump presidency is still on the table, but the US can avoid situations like what happened to Navalny in Russia as well.
In the 1920 election, Eugene Debs campaigned as the socialist nominee for president from prison, having been imprisoned for advocating draft dodging. That is the sort of candidate I would still support, even from behind bars.
Just because you’re a felon doesn’t mean you’re not a citizen and part of the country. As such, you should be able to partake in democracy in all possible ways as well.
I really dislike this punitive mindset of completely ruining someone’s life for being convicted of a crime. People make mistakes, but we don’t want to exclude them from society, we want to reform them and bring them back in. So yeah, I think, even excluding all this political bs, that no person should have their right to vote or run taken from them.
Oh yeah, I agree with you. I certainly think felons should have a vote. Hadn’t really occurred to me to include running for office in the same category.