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4/26/2016
Why Virginia Gov Terry McAuliffe can't give felons right to vote without restoring their right to own guns
Governor Terry McAuliffe has given felons in Virginia the right to vote without allowing them the right to own a gun. His executive order will let murderers and rapists will be able to serve on juries. Say someone has committed multiple violent crimes. Is there an argument to be made that we have learned something about that individual's preferences? Presumably this is the argument for why McAuliffe doesn't want to restore their rights to own guns. But why then Virginians would want to let violent criminals help make public policy and serve on juries?
From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
Gov. Terry McAuliffe signed an executive order Friday restoring the voting rights of 206,000 ex-felons, a sweeping action the governor said was aimed largely at rectifying Virginia’s “long and sad history” of suppressing African-American voting power. . . .
The action . . .has the potential to expand the state’s voter rolls, currently estimated at about 5.4 million, by as much as 3.8 percent. . . .
In his speech, McAuliffe anticipated a strong response from Republicans, who said the order’s lack of distinction between violent crimes and less serious offenses will give murderers and rapists the right to vote, serve on juries, hold public office and notarize documents. . . .
McAuliffe’s order does not restore firearm rights. The ability to purchase and own a gun still would require court action. . . .
But McAuliffe action faces a significant problem. From Article II, Section 1 of the Virginia Constitution:
Obama simultaneously gets people with misdemeanors fired from jobs, he pushes for violent felons to vote
Could someone please explain the why people with nonviolent misdemeanors should lose their jobs but violent felons should be able to vote? Why should a rapist be able to vote on issues that directly impact women but someone who put a fake coin in a laundromat as a teenager should lose his job 50 years later? Nutty Obama regulations:
Egger's crime? Putting a cardboard cutout of a dime in a washing machine in Carlisle on Feb. 2, 1963.
"It was a stupid stunt and I'm not real proud of it, but to fire somebody for something like this after seven good years of employment is a dirty trick when you come right down to it," said Eggers of Des Moines. "And they're doing this kind of thing all across the country."
Big banks have been firing low-level employees like Eggers since the issuance of new federal banking employment guidelines in May 2011 and new mortgage employment guidelines in February.
The tougher standards are meant to weed out executives and mid-level bank employees guilty of transactional crimes, like identity fraud or mortgage fraud, but they are being applied across-the-board thanks to $1 million a day fines for noncompliance.
Letting Violent Felons vote and Obama's "war on women"
Shortly after Obama's 2010 State of the Union Address, Heather Higgenbottom, then deputy director of the Domestic Policy Council, had this statement (17:44 to 17:58 in video):
The president's position, and many other legislators' position, is that for felons once you have served your sentence and you have done your time and you have completed that you should have your voting rights restored.
At about 17:22 into the video she notes how this has been Obama's position on Federal legislation from the time that he has been a US Senator. The comment makes it quite clear that Obama supports letting all felons vote, even all violent felons, even felons who have committed multiple violent crimes. Someone can commit murder and be released from prison after 8 years. The question is: why do people want murderers and rapists deciding who will win elections or what initiatives will be adopted?
As far as Obama's claims about a war on women goes, can someone explain why it is the interest of women that rapists (even people who have committed multiple rapes) should have a say in deciding who will win elections. Do women really want rapists who have raped multiple women determining social policy for women?
The point is we presumably learn something from a rapist's behavior. We learn something about how they value other people.
Having felons vote, even when a limited number of them vote illegally, can make a difference in elections ("When 1,099 felons vote in race won by 312 ballots"). Using polling data from Washington State, I found that virtually all the felons voted for Democrats (see the discussion in my book Freedomnomics here). All minority felons voted for Democrats and almost all the white felons did also. If you don't mind supporting advertising on this left wing website, here is an interview that I did with the HuffPost Live on Thursday about letting felons vote.
UPDATE: Democrats are using their convention to continue to push the "war on women" theme.
UPDATE 2: "Obama fights erosion of female voters with attacks on abortion" October 10, 2012.
In an interview with ABC News, Obama accused Romney of trying to “cloud” his views.
The president's attack on his rival over the issue of abortion was the culmination of a battery of criticisms on the issue that Team Obama kept up throughout Wednesday.
The apparent purpose is to claw back the support of female voters, which plunged in the wake of Obama's weak performance in last week's first presidential debate.
“This is another example of Governor Romney hiding positions he's been campaigning on for a year and half,” Obama told host Diane Sawyer. . . .
The new Pew Poll showed some dramatic changes that have alarmed Obama's campaign.
Romney gained among almost every demographic group, based upon registered voters. His strongest gains were among those aged 30 to 49, 18- to 29-year-olds, those with some college education, whites and women.
UPDATE: "Election could come down to what women want" Martha Raddatz, the moderator in the vice presidential debate, did her best to argue about abortion with Paul Ryan. Lynn Sweet at the Chicago Sun-Times has this:
Until Romney bested Obama in their first debate in Denver, Obama held a consistent lead among female voters in all polls as Democrats portrayed Romney and Republicans as waging a war on women. A Pew Research Center poll conducted after the Oct. 3 debate from Oct. 4-7 showed women split between Romney and Obama. That was Romney’s best showing with women all year in a Pew survey. A Fox News poll taken Oct. 7-9 gave Obama an eight-point lead over Romney with female voters. Michael Dimrock, Pew’s associate research director, said Romney may have gained “more traction” among women because of the debate where “Romney had a lot more ground to make up among women than among men — his personal image, and the Republican Party’s image, was far worse among women, meaning there was more damage to be repaired.” And unlike the Thursday vice presidential debate — where Joe Biden and Paul Ryan talked about their opposing views on abortion — Biden supports, Ryan opposes abortion rights — social issues were absent from the Denver debate. . . .
The survey found that Mitt Romney has made enormous gains with female voters — the candidates were tied among women who are likely to vote, and Obama had a nine-point lead among registered female voters. Concern over the economy has helped Romney erode what was once a sizable gender gap.
But the results suggest that Obama has found two winning issues in birth control and abortion.
Romney and Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have attacked the administration's contraception mandate as an assault on religious liberty. But the USA Today poll indicates that emphasizing the policy could help Obama more than Romney.
A greater emphasis on abortion rights could also help bolster Obama's standing with female voters, according to the USA Today poll. Nearly 40 percent of women cited abortion as the most important election issue for women. And respondents who cited abortion preferred Obama by a 3-1 margin.
"That could signal an opening for Obama among women in the second debate and the final 21 days of the campaign," USA Today said in its write-up of the poll results. . . .
UPDATE: New York Times tries to gin up issue in editorial. Take this bogus claim that the change of one Supreme Court Justice could over turn Roe. When have their been any 5-4 decisions on the central issue of Roe or even a side issue? Roe has been making it by 7-2 votes.
The fight for female voters intensified this week after the town-hall-style debate in Hempstead, N.Y., which included a question about equal pay for women that prompted a clash between the candidates over who would better serve women’s needs.
That debate spilled onto the airwaves, with Mr. Romney’s campaign quickly releasing an ad contending that he does not oppose contraception and believes that abortion should be legal in cases of rape and incest, and to save the life of the mother. . . .
“Women haven’t forgotten how we’ve suffered over the last four years in the Obama economy with higher taxes, higher unemployment and record levels of poverty,” Ms. Comstock said. “What is really frightening is that we know a second term for President Obama will bring devastating defense cuts that will cost Virginia over 130,000 jobs, more burdensome regulations and the biggest tax increase in history on our small businesses and families.”
I wonder if this approach by Romney will be appealing to women.
UPDATE: From Harold Meyerson's piece in the Washington Post on October 23rd:
The Romney who showed up for the third presidential debateMonday night was, by design, the challenger as milquetoast. With both candidates fighting hard for women’s votes, Romney was determined to avoid anything remotely bellicose in his approach to foreign affairs and his interactions with President Obama. . . .
UPDATE: The media giving extensive coverage to abortion issue may be having an impact on vote?
The polls suggest Romney, who has had the momentum in the race since the first presidential debate, has completely repaired the damaged image that plagued him throughout the Republican primaries.
Yet the polls also show Obama with a sizeable lead among women — who had trended toward Romney after the first debate — that could help him win a second term. . . .
In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, Obama scored his largest margin of the cycle over Romney among women, 56 to 42. Romney had closed to within 6 points of Obama in the same poll a month earlier. The president also enjoys a 13-point advantage over Romney on “women’s issues” in that poll.
Gallup pollster Frank Newport told The Hill he doesn’t think female voters ever actually left Obama, pointing to Gallup’s likely voter survey, which, while showing Romney with his biggest lead of the cycle this week, showed Obama maintaining an 8 point lead among women. . . .
A blanket refusal to hire workers based on criminal records or credit problems can be illegal if it has a disparate impact on racial minorities, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The agency enforces the nation’s employment discrimination laws.
"Our sense is that the problem is snowballing because of the technology allowing these checks to be done with a fair amount of ease," said Carol Miaskoff, assistant legal counsel at the EEOC.
With millions of adult Americans having criminal records, from underage drinking to homicide, increasingly more job seekers are having a rough time finding work. And more companies are trying to screen out people with bankruptcies, court judgments or other credit problems just as those numbers have swollen during the recession. . . .
If criminal histories are taken into account, the EEOC says employers must also consider the nature of the job, the seriousness of the offense and how long ago it occurred. For example, it may make sense to disqualify a bank employee with a past conviction for embezzlement, but not necessarily for drunken driving.
Most companies tend to be more nuanced when they look at credit reports, weeding out those applicants with bad credit only if they seek senior positions or jobs dealing with money. But if the screening process weeds out more black and Hispanic applicants than whites, an employer needs to show how the credit information is related to the job.
About 73 percent of major employers report that they always check on applicants’ criminal records, while 19 percent do so for select job candidates, according to a 2010 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management. . . .
Former felons and their advocates are becoming increasingly assertive in the national debate about crime, claiming that they are being discriminated against not just in matters of voting but also employment and housing.
A movement called "Ban the Box" is urging lawmakers in the District of Columbia and elsewhere to limit or bar the "have you ever been convicted of a crime" question so that ex-felons' applications for jobs, housing and the like aren't rejected out of hand. They point out that "the box" makes it difficult for even well-intentioned ex-criminals to re-establish and integrate themselves into the social mainstream. . . .
Former D.C. felons are taking matters into their hands.
Some laws and policies are discriminating against them, and they are not going to lie down and take it anymore.
That was the message Thursday evening at Wilson’s Restaurant in center city, where about 75 ex-offenders braved a thunderstorm to register to vote and plan how to effectively speak with one voice at the polls and in city hall.
These men and women comprise a substantial voting bloc in D.C. and feel empowered by their turnout in the presidential election of Barack Obama. In D.C., an estimated 16,000 people are under the supervision of the federal Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency (CSOSA), and with the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics having already purged more than 90,000 names off its voter rolls, former offenders aren’t taking any chances.
Their get-out-the-vote effort drew D.C. Councilman Jim Graham, a Democrat who is trying to hold onto his seat; sports newsman Glenn Harris; and boxing impresario Rock Newman, whose white Rolls Royce drew in supporters --and the merely curious -- alike. . . .
A new study by the Minnesota Majority found that at least 341 convicted felons in heavily Democratic Minneapolis-St. Paul who voted illegally in the 2008 Senate race. And it looks quite likely that felons gave Franken his narrow Senate victory.
The six month vote recount in the Senate race was a torturous process. The morning after November 4, 2008 election, Senator Norm Coleman lead Al Franken by 725 votes. Correcting for typos cut Coleman’s margin to 215, and a recount by all the counties reduced it further to 192.
Once the state canvassing board had looked into the intent of voters and counted 953 previously rejected absentee ballots, the final total had reversed that count and handed Franken a 312 vote victory.
WIth this small number of votes separating the two candidates even just hundreds illegal voters can alter the outcome. By any measure, felons overwhelmingly vote for Democrats. . . .
9th Circuit decision gives felons the right to vote while they are serving in prison
The decision: Felons should be allowed to vote because the criminal justice system supposedly incarcerates blacks relative to whites more than it should. The AP discussion on this is here.
Two, many convicted criminals face severe penalties in addition to a prison sentence. Many jobs are forbidden to felons, often making it hard for them simply to earn a living. Yet, since the 2000 election, the loss of voting rights has suddenly emerged as the most pressing problem that former convicts supposedly face. Restoring voting rights, we are told, is indicative “in so many ways of citizenship that it is more important than owning a gun or being able to hold [a particular job].” Felons themselves, however, have other priorities. In addition to finding a job, felons, who frequently live in poor, high-crime neighborhoods want to be able to defend themselves. In Virginia, the number one reason felons cite for asking for clemency is the desire to regain their right to own a gun. The Assistant for Clemency for the Governor of Virginia for 1994 and 1995 reported that restoring “voting rights was never on the application for clemency.” According to academic studies, from 1972 to 1996, on average 80 percent of felons would have voted Democratic. An overwhelming 93 percent ostensibly would have voted for Bill Clinton in 1996. In addition to giving the Democrats the White House in 2000, this “felon vote” would have given Democrats control of the Senate from 1986 to 2004. But these studies are problematic. Felons’ voting patterns are assumed to be the same as those of non-felons of the same race, gen- der, age, and educational status. The estimates do not account for the possibility that there is something fundamentally different about felons that could cause them to vote differently. If two people are of the same race, gender, age, and educational status but one person commits mur- ders or rapes, there might be something quite different between these two people that could affect how they vote. Public Opinion Strategies surveyed 602 adults in Washington State in May 2005. Of the respondents, 102 were felons who had their voting rights restored, while 500 were non-felons. They were asked about their political preferences, as well as background information about their race, gender, education level, religious habits, employment, age, and county of residence. This survey makes it possible to test the assumption that felons and non-felons are essentially the same. The survey’s results indicate that felons vote even more frequently for Democrats than one would estimate based solely on their personal characteristics. After accounting for all these factors, I found that felons were 36 percent more likely than non-felons with the same character- istics to have voted for Kerry over Bush and 37 percent more likely to be registered Democratic. While African-American and Asians in Wash- ington tend to vote for “a few more Democrats than Republicans,” felons among those groups vote for “mostly Democrats.” In fact, felons in both groups voted exclusively for Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry. . . .
How much is your vote worth? Apparently, less than it used to be. The registration and multiple registration of so many people who shouldn’t be voting, means your vote is diluted by fraudulent votes.
There is a practical concern here. Research by one of the authors here finds that vote fraud lowers the likelihood that people’s votes will matter and thus results in few people voting.
People have heard about many of these problems.
-- ACORN has signed up 1.3 million people this year in a massive registration drive in 18 swing states, with people being reregistered dozens of times. -- A Government Accountability Office study indicates that 3 percent of people called for jury duty from voter registration rolls are not U.S. citizens. -- Across the country there are counties were more people are registered to vote than the adult population living there. In Indianapolis, registered voters are 5 percent more than the number of adults living in the city.
But little attention has been paid to the tens of thousands of felons who registered to vote in state after state. . . .
"I never voted before," Woods said, because of a felony conviction that previously barred him from the polls. "Without this service, I would have had no way to get here."
Personally, I still think that it is strange that this is the only "right" that Democrats want to restore to felons. All the information that I have seen indicates that felons care much more about other issues (jobs, self defense). But what baffles me completely is how some people such as this author think that American Democracy is at stake because we are not letting murderers and rapists vote. What is the deal there? The same people who push for voting rights being restored to violent felons would never think of restoring the right to own a gun to those who were convicted of even just simple misdemeanors.
