Lib Dems 'want violence register'

[MobBoss]

Doesn't it tell you anything that your main supporter in this thread is MobBoss ?!

PS No offense meant, MobBoss - I'm actually trying to stay out of the "is this right or wrong" part of the debate, as I'm more interested in just how willingly CD has followed the party line down a quite illberal (and even conservative) path....

No offense taken Lambert. In fact, truth be known, a good number of people who argue against me on various issues end up agreeing with me on something eventually.

 

[MobBoss]

You mustn't turn "taking away the right to vote" around to "Why is allowing felons to vote a good idea".

That is a very fundamental something. The right to vote is not something that should be able to be taken away.

Of course it should. Would you allow a felon his right to bear arms and own a pistol? No. Once you lose your freedom because of your crimes against society, you should no longer enjoy the rights of that society....i.e. the right to vote. I dont support a permanent ban, but I do think a person should be made to prove they are truly rehabilitated before regaining the right vote and bear arms for instance. Such a requirement is neither unreasonable or overly burdensome.

Under no circumstance should the state / law enforcement be able to do that to the people who basically are the ones who elect them, because that is very abusable. You create a presedence in which the governing powers can decide who can elect (them) and who cannot elect (others). Very bad idea.

You have to realize also we are talking FELONS here. Criminals of the most serious type....and they have to be convicted by a jury of their peers. If your government gets to the point where it is rigging trials to swing elections, chances are HIGH that the elections are rigged already. There are most certainly easier ways to rig an election by tossing voters into the klink.

Because morality isn't absolute - which things should be crimes is something that we should all have a say in.

Now wait a minute...you are actually saying that FELONS..convicted hard criminals, should have a say in what is a crime and what isnt? You got to be kidding me.

Now, it's up to you to tell us why letting people convicted of a crime vote is a bad thing?

Fraud for one. I wouldnt put it past a criminal to actually sell his vote to the highest bidder. Also, I hardly think that a convicted felon has societies best interest at heart when he would vote. I mean come on, would you think its ok to have Ken Lay from Enron vote on something business law related after bilking so many people out of so much money? How could you ever say the man had societies best interests at heart?

And removing the vote isn't a punishment - it's preventing from democracy from working, which affects us all, including non-criminals (e.g., if I think drugs should be legal, but nonetheless refrain from breaking the law, I am still adversely affected if those convicted of taking drugs are not allowed to vote for a party which might bring in more sensible drug laws).

Please, its not preventing democracy from working. Its working just fine, and those who actually DONT break laws make it work no problem. Felons not getting to vote? In my opinion, if such things matter to you so much - DONT BREAK THE LAW.

 

[Mise]

People keep making absurd analogies like, "we don't allow children to vote" or "when someone shoots someone, we take their guns away", and then extend this from children to criminals, and from guns to the right to vote Am I the only one who thinks that logic is woefully flawed?

A criminal act has NOTHING to do with voting.

 

[bathsheba666]

There aren't enough terabytes on the planet to accomplish this...

 

[MobBoss]

People keep making absurd analogies like, "we don't allow children to vote" or "when someone shoots someone, we take their guns away", and then extend this from children to criminals, and from guns to the right to vote :crayzeye: Am I the only one who thinks that logic is woefully flawed?

A criminal act has NOTHING to do with voting.

You are correct. However, society has deemed it a "good idea" to do things like:

1. Take away a felons right to own a gun.
2. Track Child molesters/Sexual Predators and make sure they dont live near schools or work near kids.
3. Continue to monitor a felon, sometimes even for years, even after he gets out of prison. Its called probation and its a period to see if the felon indeed is going to "obey the rules" of society.

Along with these (and a few others that I missed) you will find "take away a felons right to vote". This is good sense as until that felon PROVES that he can be a trustworthy part of society once more, he has no business in making the decisions of that society at all. I think that is just good common sense.

 

[Mise]

Tbh, I'm not particularly for or against allowing criminals to vote, as I said it's really not a big issue for me, and I trust whatever verdict society comes to. However, these kinds of logical leaps just don't appeal to me at all...

You are correct. However, society has deemed it a "good idea" to do things like:

1. Take away a felons right to own a gun.
2. Track Child molesters/Sexual Predators and make sure they dont live near schools or work near kids.
3. Continue to monitor a felon, sometimes even for years, even after he gets out of prison. Its called probation and its a period to see if the felon indeed is going to "obey the rules" of society.

Along with these (and a few others that I missed) you will find "take away a felons right to vote". This is good sense as until that felon PROVES that he can be a trustworthy part of society once more, he has no business in making the decisions of that society at all. I think that is just good common sense.

You can't just say, "I think it's good common sense," and expect people to agree with you...

You need to provide a basis on which to deny certain rights to certain people. It's simply not good enough to say, "they commited a crime, therefore they shouldn't be allowed to vote," because the therefore part simply doesn't follow logically. You're missing out the "why", in other words. You're simply avoiding the question by saying "it's common sense."

So, you need to:
1. Provide a basis for denying criminals certain rights, and specifically which rights to deny, and why. (i.e. why deny them the right to vote, but not the right to life [for example]?)
2. Provide a basis for who gets to vote and who doesn't, and why. (i.e. why should criminals and children be denied the right to vote, but not people who dropped out of high school [for example]*?)

Incidentally, as you know, I don't consider "the right to bear arms" a right in this country, so you don't have to worry about that one.

*-actually, it goes deeper than this. Why should anyone be allowed to vote? I could argue that, since children don't possess the mental capacity to vote, we should extend this to people who have dropped out of high-school with no qualifications, because it's just common sense that people who have dropped out of high school don't have the mental capacity to make correct decisions about their own lives, let alone the lives of millions of people. Or I could extend it to people who don't have a degree, because people with a degree are clever (and academia has a liberal bias, which would benefit me slightly). Or I could extend this to anyone who doesn't vote for me, because if you're too stupid to realise that I'm the best man for the job, you don't deserve to vote.

 

[zulu9812]

Well, I was very surprised at this from the LibDems. Ming has always looked like a Tory MP and now he sounds like one!

You don’t suppose this is his opening shot in his bid for a cabinet post in a Con-Lib pact at the next election?

Well, in the past, the golden rule has always been that we won't enter a coalition unless the other party agrees to electoral reform to proportional representation.

 

[Mise]

Well, in the past, the golden rule has always been that we won't enter a coalition unless the other party agrees to electoral reform to proportional representation.

Naively I would expect the Tories to go along with that, since they'd benefit at least as much as the Lib Dems would.

 

[Xenocrates]

Please explain to me why it is a good idea to allow felons to vote? I think removing your civil right to vote is perfectly acceptable part of punishment for a felony as the crime is against society at large.

I have another explanation for this. If you de-emancipate criminals, there will be an incentive to criminalise people from classes that are less likely to vote for you.

I can't say that I'd agree with the real asshats (murderers etc) voting because they have demonsttated irrationality. The question is, where do you draw the line? Some murderers may have been abused, some rapists may have been wrongly accused and convicted. Maybe it's not right to go down this road at all.

 

[Sidhe]

No offense taken Lambert. In fact, truth be known, a good number of people who argue against me on various issues end up agreeing with me on something eventually.

That's because everyones gotta be right once in a while

And hence we agree about the right to vote.

I had no idea criminals could vote here and actually have always agreed with the idea that they shouldn't? A conservative chin.k( please note ***** is not capatalised before anyone wants to chastise me for trying to avoid the PC machine that's hilarious) in my liberal armour? Not really I just like the idea of people who deprived society of their rights by their actions should have the same punishment cast upon them, OK petty crimes vote all you like, but assault and battery, organised drug dealing, serious theft should mean you lose the vote IMO.

wop -hmm interesting did I spell it wrong, sorry just thinking out loud?

 

[storealex]

I don't care. This is only about what is fair, but it will not change anything, since there is so few serious felons that it dosn't matter. At least where I live it's like that. Big deal about nothing...

 

[Enkidu Warrior]

Any party which advocates the stripping of voting rights from anyone is, in my eyes, neither liberal nor democratic. The Lib Dems might well have lost my vote.

The right to vote is not something soceity should be able to revoke, regardless of the reason.

 

[Hitro]

Any party which advocates the stripping of voting rights from anyone is, in my eyes, neither liberal nor democratic.

Indeed. It's the most undemocratic thing you can do.

People become felons due to laws, laws are made and enacted by the representatives of the people. Those representatives then again are elected by everyone with the same amount of votes (often one). If you prevent people from voting you prevent them from their right to change these laws. Any argument in favour of this assumes some sort of higher moral truth.
The very idea of a "serious" crime is in legal terms complete nonsense. It's merely a matter of a completely arbitrary definition.
Davo and others might think of people who raped and killed 20 children, but the next government might well think of people who use drugs or people who attend certain protests.

Every grown up individual's right to vote is an unalienable part of a democratic system. Take it away and you take democracy away.

 

[Hitro]

I don't care. This is only about what is fair, but it will not change anything, since there is so few serious felons that it dosn't matter. At least where I live it's like that. Big deal about nothing...

While my last post is the ideological argument for why this idea is wrong this one is, although you probably didn't mean it that way, the pragmatic one.

There are indeed very few people who commit what those in favour here (Davo et al) call "serious crimes", like murder. These people won't make much of a difference - either way. So why take the risk of instituting an easily abusible system of voting restrictions just to "get rid" of that handful of people?

 

[simonnomis]

The right to vote is not something soceity should be able to revoke, regardless of the reason.

Why not? We revoke the right of criminals to freedom and I don't hear people saying they should be given that freedom back. So in precisely the same vein, we should also revoke their freedom to vote for having, as Sidhe said "depriv[ed] society of their rights by their actions".

Its not as if the parallels are hard to spot here; if you can happily defend one, why not the other? Either you follow the (undeniably liberal) rules of civilised society, or you lose your right to influence them.

Using the same tragic arguments some have on here, if 50.1% of people decide to murder another person and get put away, they could simply vote from their prison to legalise murder. A ridiculous proposition (like most 'liberal' ones bandied about here), but the principle is the same regardless.

To put it simply, the voice of hardenend criminals should no longer be valid because of their anti-societal actions; they should be stripped of their rights to vote - for a behavior that the rest of society deems wrong - for the duration of their sentence. That can then be considered rehabilitation.

 

[Hitro]

Its not as if the parallels are hard to spot here; if you can happily defend one, why not the other? Either you follow the (undeniably liberal) rules of civilised society, or you lose your right to influence them.

What are "the rules of civilised society"? What sort of violations are "enough" to lose your right to influence them? And most importantly, who decides about that?

Using the same tragic arguments some have on here, if 50.1% of people decide to murder another person and get put away, they could simply vote from their prison to legalise murder. A ridiculous proposition (like most 'liberal' ones bandied about here), but the principle is the same regardless.

Exactly, that is democracy. Now in many systems 50.1% wouldn't be enough because certain rights are regarded as more basic than that and thus put into constitutions that are harder to change, but ultimately, if enough people agree on something it becomes a "rule of civilised society", as you put it.

Two more realistic examples:

1. Rape. Is rape already bad enough for it? And besides the voting thing, what is the "civilised society's" rule on rape? A life sentence? Surely true in some democracies. But in others convincted rapists go out on probation.

2. Adultery. In most Western societies not a crime, but in many others, for example in the Muslim world, you will very likely find a strong democratic majority in favour of making it a "serious crime".

Now do you just regard the latter as "uncivilised"? Wouldn't that mean that you just assume your view to be the civilised one and assume (which so far might be correct) than the majority in your country shares it? What if that changes? What if they deny you the right to vote based on some minority view you happen to have?

 

[mdwh]

Perhaps you are not aware of the fact that this already happens to a section of the population we consider to be mentally unable to make these decisions? Or to people between the ages of 0-18 in most countries?

Firstly, this is done because a child is considered unable to know about politics - can it be shown that people who break the law don't know about politics? I don't see any connection.

Secondly, the point is that children are not affected by Government, in that they don't have jobs or pay taxes (well, 16-17 year olds may in the UK, but then I'm in favour of lowering the vote age to 16, so my viewpoint here is consistent). You could use this argument to say that people shouldn't have the vote whilst they are in prison (and preferably for a few years, not just if it happens to coincide with voting age) - but not for afterwards.

Thirdly, children always grow up and will have the vote, so if they decided it was unfair, they have a say in trying to change that. Removing a vote from a convicted criminal permanently will not allow this.

There will always be an elected body making these decisions. We vote for them and in doing so trust them to work in our interests. And most do. Otherwise we have referenda, which you clearly also don't like the sound of.

I'm not sure how this is relevant. The issue is who gets to vote - not whether we have representative democracy or a "direct" democracy.

And your scenario completely lacks realism, as no government would propose a referendum that asked for 49% of the population to be stripped of their rights.

Not 49% of course, but a smaller percentage (e.g., drug users, homosexuals).

Making ludicrous laws would result in the system collapsing from internal unrest.

I believe we already have some ludicrous laws, and some ludicrous laws which were only very recently overturned (e.g., anal sex in the US). So this is not hypothetical, this is real.

But I do see the right to vote as one of the most powerful we have as law-abiding individuals in a democracy.

Voting is as much a responsibility as a right. By removing the vote from some merely as a "punishment", you adversely affect democracy, which in turn affects those people who have not broken the law, but may share similar viewpoints.

Come on, doing it to "punish" is a incredibly poor reason. Can't you think of a better way? It's not like someone will think "Ooh, I better not commit this crime, else I won't be able to vote!" There are plenty of more effective ways to punish someone.

I did not read anything that states that "people ... such as drug users ... homosexual, people of a certain religion and so on" would be included in this proposition. No one with half a mind would ever come up with such a law either.

Drugs aren't illegal? Homosexual acts have never been illegal?

And I believe a person who commits a serious felony should lose this priviledge as part of their punishment.

Again, who decides what crimes are serious, and which aren't? Also note, we don't have "felonies" in the UK.

It really is that simple. Who knows, as a bonus it might help them to appreciate the value of this right, and thus encourage them not to commit another crime in the future.

Years in prison won't deter them, but not being able to vote will?

All it will do is make them not care about the voting process even less, when the Government is so happy to take it away. And people complain that turnout is low?

 

[mdwh]

Now wait a minute...you are actually saying that FELONS..convicted hard criminals, should have a say in what is a crime and what isnt? You got to be kidding me.

Yes. Can't you see what a circular argument it is to say that whether X should be legal is only decided by those who haven't done X?

Once again, I'm not talking rape or murder, I'm talking debateable crimes such as drugs, which are still counted as "serious" crimes.

And it sounds like you *are* scared that criminals will vote for the "make murder legal party"! Firstly, I doubt that - committing a crime doesn't mean you want anarchy where everyone can do that. Secondly, there aren't enough of them to make any impact.

This reminds me of people who say the BNP shouldn't stand. I don't agree with the BNP's policies at all, but I can see it is poor logic to say that the BNP shouldn't stand because we disagree with the BNP.

If you truely believe in democracy, that means giving everyone there say - yes, including the 10 people who might vote for a "make murder legal" party.

Fraud for one. I wouldnt put it past a criminal to actually sell his vote to the highest bidder.

I see no evidence that a criminal would be more likely to do this than anyone else. And who would pay someone to vote in a certain way? How would you trust them? And if parties did this, they have the risk of being discovered.

Also, I hardly think that a convicted felon has societies best interest at heart when he would vote.

He has his own interests at heart - just like every other voter!

I mean come on, would you think its ok to have Ken Lay from Enron vote on something business law related after bilking so many people out of so much money? How could you ever say the man had societies best interests at heart?

Who cares how he votes - he votes for his interest, and he's outnumbered by everyone else voting for their interest.

Please, its not preventing democracy from working. Its working just fine, and those who actually DONT break laws make it work no problem. Felons not getting to vote? In my opinion, if such things matter to you so much - DONT BREAK THE LAW.

I don't break the law. But I believe that say, drugs should be legal. Now you tell me why my viewpoint, even as a law abiding citizen, should be lessened, because those who have taken drugs are not allowed to vote?

This is absurd. You don't get to make a law and then say those people can't vote. Your viewpoint should not be given an advantage over mine.

 

[mdwh]

Using the same tragic arguments some have on here, if 50.1% of people decide to murder another person and get put away, they could simply vote from their prison to legalise murder. A ridiculous proposition (like most 'liberal' ones bandied about here), but the principle is the same regardless.

But this is a flaw in democracy full stop.

If 50.1% of people decide that Jews should be sent to concentration camps, then oh dear, look what happens. Or even 30-40% with our weird voting system.

The way to stop this is with things like constitutions, unelected houses and so on. The majority of people who commit murder do so for a particular reason - I don't believe they believe that all murder should be legal, else they'd risk ending up dead.

And if 50.1% of the population end up in prison, you've got bigger problems with society.

 

[Rik Meleet]

An interesting side-point: Why is there a structural exclusion of voters based on age ??
Why can't children vote ?? If you think long and hard about it, that does not make sense at all.