Did they actually get it? I thought it was just agreed/dictated that the government had to change the rules that stopped them from voting, but I don't think they can vote in the upcoming election.
History Questions Not Worth Their Own Thread VII
- Thread starter Plotinus
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So what is the reasoning behind not allowing prisoners to vote? Is it a temporary ban? This strikes me as rather odd form of punishment.
Whilst staying at Her Majesty's pleasure, you are ineligible to vote. I assume it's part of our wonderful methods of rehabilitating people.
The EU has taken issue with this and naturally our right-wing press has been decrying this as yet another assault on our sovereignty, blah blah blah.
The EU has taken issue with this and naturally our right-wing press has been decrying this as yet another assault on our sovereignty, blah blah blah.
Louis XXIV
Le Roi Soleil
In the US, it's interesting because, not only are they disenfranchised, but the census counts their residence as the jail they are staying in. So states with large federal prison populations or counties with large state prisons have greater electoral voting power even if the people they're representing (i.e., the prisoners) can't vote and probably wouldn't agree with their policies.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
I guess counting prisoners as only 3/5 of a person would be a bit on the nose.
In the US that issue is law on a state by state basis, rather than federal law. Some states make a lifetime ban on voting for convicted felons. Some for only their term in prison, some released prisoners can petition to get their vote back.
The purpose behind it is both punishment, to make the punishment even more extreme, and in some cases the idea that those people have forfeited their rights. Or, more precisely, some people make the argument that voting is a privilege, not a right. And so they fortified the privilege.
sydhe
King of Kongs
The one I know of was Ickes' idea to resettle Jews in Alaska. It fell because of Antisemitism, the fear of foreigners taking over part of the US, and ultimately, Roosevelt's opposition. It did inspire Michael Chabon's great novel, The Yiddish Policeman's Union the premise of which is that we allowed it to happen.
In Australia, where voting is compulsory, it is also illegal for anyone serving more thuan three years in prison to vote, if I remember correctly. Doesn't really make much sense.
The reason people deny other people the right to vote is so to have a stronger hand in government to use that government to harm those who are disenfranchised. They will, in one form or another, deny liberty or property rights, or seize property. Some would claim that if convicts voted, they'd vote themselves out of prison. Just as some claim that if the poor are allowed to vote, they'll vote themselves welfare. This argument of course ignores the fact that minority groups don't have the balance of power in elections, unless they are also an elite group. But that's the way the argument goes.
The interesting thing is there is no legitimate claim to deny anyone the vote in Australia, due to compulsory voting. In other countries, where voting is optional, the claim that voting is a privilege rather than a right, while bogus, can at least be used as a handwave. Here we force people to vote. So it's a very transparent middle finger to the electoral system.
Compulsory voting and a restrictive electorate aren't mutually exclusive though.
Yes, though Howard's attempt to prohibit all prisoners from voting in 2007 was ruled unconstitutional - disenfranchisement was only considered appropriate and adapted to more serious crimes, though the reasoning on why three years imprisonment is reflective of a sufficient degree of criminality to enable disenfranchisement seems pretty dubious.
In this country, that's the point at which you become ineligible for a Firearm Certificate, so that seems to be a general consensus.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
It would tend to require creating some legally distinct classes of people, though, in the same way that we legally distinguish between children and adults. The trick with an undifferentiated populace is, withdrawing the compulsion for one segment of the population is a seemingly-arbitrary privilege rather than a punishment, governments usually find it harder to defend extending privileges to marginal groups like prisoners than to defend punishments.
I think possibly you're trying to overcomplicate things. Most electorates originally were restricted. But seeing as voting was seen as a right, there was no real need to make it compulsory. (Not to mention that 'compulsory' voting doesn't guarantee a 100% turn up either.)
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
dutchfire said:
I agree with this, however I think that nowadays Orthodox Jews in Israel at least match - if not actually surpass - Palestinians in terms of fertility rates. But of course Orthodox Jews are not the majority of Israeli population (not yet at least). In the past Orthodox Jews (who then formed vast majority of all Jews) were also characterized by very high fertility rates. Already in year 1598 certain Sebastian Miczyński noted the following:
"[Jews] marry at age 12, don't fight in wars, don't die from bad air, so they breed like rabbits."
Regarding the part about "dying from bad air" - he could be referring to tuberculosis. Prussian statistics on mortality and causes of death from the city of Warsaw in years 1800 - 1805 show that tuberculosis was responsible for 18,3% of all Christian deaths and only 4,6% of all Jewish deaths (link below):
http://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...ians-amp-Jews-of-Warsaw-in-years-ca-1800-1805
In the link, user Angela suggested a few possible explanations for that pattern. She quoted "Milk consumption and tuberculosis in Britain, 1850-1950" to show that there was apparently a connection between drinking raw milk or eating beef and getting infected by the bovine type of TB bacillus:
Angela said:
What is known about Jews in the PLC is that their population was increasing faster than Christian populations - that was the case also after 1670 (when the last of major waves of Jewish immigration to the PLC from abroad took place). Available records show that Jewish families usually had statistically more children than Christian families. Whether that was due to higher fertility or lower mortality of children is another thing (probably due to both factors, as Miczyński had suggested in 1598). Recently the demography of the PLC's Jews until the end of the 18th century was researched by Bogumił Szady, Ph.D.:
http://atlasfontium.pl/index.php?article=materials&language=en
http://www.kul.pl/dr-hab-bogumil-szady,art_904.html
One of areas of Europe from which Jews emigrated to the PLC until 1670 (the last immigrant group in 1670 were Jews from Vienna) was the HRE. Michael Toch, "The Formation of a Diaspora: the Settlement of Jews in the Medieval German Reich", shows patterns of Jewish demography in the HRE:
Year - number of existing Jewish communities in the HRE:
1250 - 250
1300 - 509
1450 - 321
1525 - 59
After 1525 number of communities continued to decline.
According to estimates by Salo W. Baron, "A Social and Religious History of the Jews", in 1490 there were ca. 600,000 Jewish people in Europe but their distribution throughout the continent was much different than what we know from more recent times. The largest Diasporas in 1490 existed - according to Baron - in Spain (250,000), Italy (120,000) and the German Reich (still 80,000 even though their number was already declining). Smaller ones in Portugal (30,000) and Poland-Lithuania (30,000 - which is in agreement with most estimates for year ca. 1500 by Polish and Polish-Jewish historians that I've seen).
So according to Salo W. Baron in 1490 the PLC had only 5% of European Jewish population.
But the same author estimates that during the first half of the 1800s Jewish population in lands of the PLC (at that time already partitioned between Russia, Prussia and Austria) amounted to as much as 42% - 46% of Jewish population of the entire world (not just of Europe).
With subsequent Jewish westward emigration from Russia, Austria and Prussia to other parts of Europe and to the USA from the 1800s to 1914, the distribution of Jewish populations around the globe once again changed - so that in the early 1930s the largest Jewish Diaspora was in the USA, and amounted to 4,100,000 up to 4,200,000 people. The 2nd largest was in the USSR, the 3rd largest in Poland. In Palestine there lived in 1936-1937 already around 370,000 - 400,000 Jewish people and they comprised 36% of its population, making Palestine of 1937 already the most Jewish-inhabited region percentage-wise.
After 1918 the USA passed laws on immigration quotas limiting the influx of Jews, as well as Eastern and Southern European immigrants (they became unwelcomed guests due to racial theories prevalent in the USA at that time - by contrast immigration from Germanic countries was promoted).
Due to those quotas between 1918 and 1939 a lot of Jews that were willing to emigrate from Europe to the USA, could not do that.
It is interesting why Jewish-Americans who allegedly have such a strong lobby were unable to successfully lobby for continued allowance of Jewish immigration after 1918? And this is my next question in this thread (you might want to check figures on Jewish immigration in 1890-1914 and 1918-1939).
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
IIRC there are no statistics on the 2nd generation because they are counted in statistics as part of "native Dutch", "native Swedes", etc.
Entire world is already showing a drop in fertility rate, even African countries (in that last case from 7 births to 6, but still a drop). Which is bad news really, because Greenpeace et. al. are still stuck in the 1970s and claim that there will be overpopulation. While there is going to be a demographic Winter.
Demographic Winters are so bad not only or not mostly because population drops, but because population gets old and all economic growth slows down and then stalls. Most of GDP is generated by people aged ca. 30 to 50+, which also partially explains why countries where median age is like 15 or so are poor. But once you get with median age beyond 50 (and some countries like Germany and Japan are already close), your GDP per capita starts declining.
In addition to not generating much GDP, old people also rely on others to generate GDP for them so they can get their pensions. Thus the future with continued sub-replacement fertility rates doesn't look bright and can't really look bright. Immigration from Third World countries with high fertility rates can help for some time, but fertility rates in these countries are already also declining, and at some point will also descent into sub-replacement. The future of Europe looks a bit like the image from 2011 French movie "Intouchables", with low earner immigrant social workers taking care of decrepit autochthons.
Not that it's really on-topic, but there's already overpopulation.
Here's what David Attenborough had to say about it a couple of years ago:
Link to video.
Here's what David Attenborough had to say about it a couple of years ago:
Link to video.
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