I understand your tack. I respectfully disagree. Felons have generally demonstrated moral turpitude, total disrespect for the laws of God and men, a desire to scam the system, and a general lack of judgement. A felon will tend to elect people just like them and we have enough criminals in government now. So I do not support restoring a felons’ right to vote.
100% agreement
The moral turpitude argument would have been valid 200 years ago (probably even 100), but not now — the reaason is this: the class of felon
is far too broad now.
In Three Felonies a Day, the author goes over how the proliferation of felonies has turned the normal behavior of many normal people into arguable felonies; from an interview:
Why did you decide to write this book?in fact, any [federal] sentence greater than a single year is a felony:
Sometime in the mid-1980s I started to notice a change in the nature of the federal criminal prosecutions that I was handling during the course of my criminal defense and civil liberties law practice. I started to represent more and more indicted clients where neither I nor other lawyers in my firm could figure out quite what the client/defendant had done to deserve to get indicted (or, if we got the case pre-indictment, what the client had done to get investigated or targeted). The client’s conduct seems to me to conform to normal standards and expectations, even if sometimes a bit aggressive or “sharp.” I started to keep notes on this phenomenon.
As the years wore on, the problems got more frequent and more acute. I was representing more and more federal criminal defendants who had done the deeds charged against them, but I did not deem what they did to constitute a crime. […] I vowed that someday I would write a book on this other phenomenon of federal criminal prosecutions on the basis of vague statutes, directed against innocent people.
From Wikipedia:18 U.S. Code § 3559 - Sentencing classification of offenses (a) Classification.— An offense that is not specifically classified by a letter grade in the section defining it, is classified if the maximum term of imprisonment authorized is— (1) life imprisonment, or if the maximum penalty is death, as a Class A felony; (2) twenty-five years or more, as a Class B felony; (3) less than twenty-five years but ten or more years, as a Class C felony; (4) less than ten years but five or more years, as a Class D felony; (5) less than five years but more than one year, as a Class E felony; (6) one year or less but more than six months, as a Class A misdemeanor; (7) six months or less but more than thirty days, as a Class B misdemeanor; (8) thirty days or less but more than five days, as a Class C misdemeanor; or (9) five days or less, or if no imprisonment is authorized, as an infraction.
The reform of harsh felony laws that had originated in Great Britain was deemed "one of the first fruits of liberty" after the United States became independent.
[…]
Federal law does not have any provisions for persons convicted of federal felonies in a federal United States district court to apply to have their record expunged. While the pending Second Chance Act[dated info] would change this if enacted, at present the only relief that an individual prosecuted in federal court may receive is a Presidential Pardon, which does not expunge the conviction, but rather grants relief from the civil disabilities that stem from it.
It seems to me that the following was prophetic:
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." — Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged