Alabama says a new state law expanding the list of felonies that cause a person to lose their right to vote won’t be enforced until after the November election and asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit over the effective date.
The Alabama attorney general office wrote in a Friday court filing that the new law, which has a Oct. 1 effective date, cannot be used to block people from voting in the upcoming election, because the Alabama Constitution prohibits new election laws from taking effect within six months of the general election.
Seems fair. If the candidate can be a felon, why not the voter?
This looks like a massive own goal for the Alabama GOP. The relevant state constitution amendment was pushed through in response to covid 19 and they way many states improved voting access during the worst of the pandemic.
It was supposed to make it harder to expand voting access but now (briefly) did the opposite. Not that it matters much on a deep red state.
To the people saying there should be no reason to lose the right to vote. I do not agree. Treason – this should absolutely bar their right to vote, if they are not sentenced to death. So be the absolutists all you’d like, but there is a line, and a fair due process and conviction of treason is it.
I feel like there are 2 related arguments against this. One is that it could motivate political prosecution to disenfranchise people. The second is that it kind of creates a slippery slope, if treason disenfranchises you why not murder, or rape, or election fraud or whatever other crime someone considers serious enough
Anything can be used for political persecution/prosecution, that is not an argument to not do something.
And for your second argument, that’s exactly how it works in the US — felonies mean losing the vote. Not that I agree with it in all cases. And using slippery slope here is logically fallacious since I’m being specific to a single cause pointing to a single effect, whereas you’re assuming such an effect will then create further causes to it.
The point is that due process is supposed to protect against phony charges. So to me, at minimum, a conviction of treason, with fair due process, is not at all a slippery slope. And since treason is the ultimate anti-patriotic criminal act a citizen could commit, and once convicted and upheld through appeal, they should no longer be allowed to vote in the country they betrayed.
Thus, I refute the absolutists, hence my post.
So after having served your scentence, this law instates an additional penalty retroactively. Seems fair.
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