Pants-of-dog wrote:And these historic restrictions were manifestly racist and classist and excluded large sections of the population for no good reason.
Because of this, we should ask if the same is occurring here.
Why
for no good reason? They want a society that is reflective of their culture, standards, and their perceived capabilities at sustaining their own civilization and way of life.
Maybe they are wrong in terms of race...
But they still historically restrict voting.
This would make sense if your idea of “better” was actually better than the criminal’s version of “better”.
I am not sure that is the case.
Why not?
Torus34 wrote:Werv:
I stated my position. I see no need to embroider it.
As to sex offenders, you're conflating apples with oranges. I see no need to answer.
Regards.
A sex offender would be able to vote, right? They did the time, right?
What you are arguing for is that people who made choices to commit very serious crimes in the past should be able to cast their votes right alongside the bulk of people who have obeyed the law their whole lives.
If someone is morally flawed enough to commit a felony --
a very serious crime -- why should we believe that they have their moral lvies back together again after prison? And if someone was once capable of such a level of crimianlity, why shouldn't their punishment extend further into the future in this regard..?
... and if we can't trust a sex offender to not re-offend so we put them on a special list for monitoring, why would we trust them to vote?
Heisenberg wrote:The 1790 Act and the USA's "historic voting laws" also limited naturalisation and voting rights in quite an important way, that you unsurprisingly are neglecting to mention.
Yeah, it limited it to white people.
But that is not exactly what we are talking about here:
it is an example of a law that is premised on the good standing of the applicant. So why would we not say that a criminal has forfeited their good standing and thus is not eligible to vote?
It would be in line with our historic concepts of limitation.
This is conflating two issues. A country can of course limit the way it gives out naturalised citizenship however it likes. For natural-born US citizens it has a duty to treat them fairly, though. And looking to the US's notoriously racist past as a model for how we should define "fairness" today, is absurd.
... How is it unfair to take away the right of an ex-felon to vote or own a gun?
It is entirely logicla.
and are you implying that iit would be racist to do this -- because black people are criminals?
I'm sure you don't, because it's a voting restriction - like literacy tests in the days of Jim Crow, or voter ID laws today - that disproportionately works in your favour as a white nationalist.
Wait, so black people can't be expected to have a valid ID and can't be expected to follow the laws, so you are a racist if you say you need an ID to vote and ex-felons can't vote?
You are literally makign it out like black people are so disproportionately more likely to be incapable of having an ID and following the law that it is literally a racial aggravation against blacks to require IDs and no felonies to vote.