<x-flowed>Volunteering, as I do, with an organization that recruited and trained over 100 volunteers (o ver a quarter of whom were ex-felons) to lead voter regisration teams that went on to register thousands of voteres --  I am passionately committed to the belief that felons should have the right to vote. In fact, I believe that denying the right to vote encourages greater alienation from society and less investment in society's welfare -- hardly something we want to encourage.

The reason we recruited so many felons to volunteer is that we wanted to register former felons and believed that hearing from former felon volunteers about voting would increase their belief that their vote matters.

Let me tell you about one of our volunteers -- an ex-felon who was jailed for drug-related crimes. Not only did he alone register more than 600 people to vote (as a VOLUNTEER!!!); he and his wife also mentored ajudicated youth in our program. When he voted for the first time in his life in the 04  primary, he  cried -- he was so moved by the power of being one with society. The power to vote is the power to inspire and to change a life. One of the men he registered to vote was an ex-felon who had been 30 years out of prison but never voted because he thought he could not. Learning he had the right, this strong, old man broke down in tears of joy that he, too, could be part of American society and have a say in his government.

Denying people the right to vote casts them out of society -- which is clearly the desire of some people. However, if you want people to commit fewer crimes, you have to involve them in society; not increase their alienation. Not only is it inhumane; it's wrong-headed. If society declares that felons are by v irtue of their crime forever beyond the rights of civil society; how to we rebuild their ties to society and discourage recidivism?
I am troubled by tone of this conversation. It seems lost to participants - both for and against felon voting --  that these former felons are people just like you and me whose electoral concerns are as prosaic and mundane as yours and mine. They are concerned about the cost of their parents' prescription drugs, whether there will be Social Security when they retire, afffordable health care for their children and so on. Ex-felons are not voting in a bloc to make burglary legal or in any other way that would endanger our republic. I can understand the punitive desire to forever take away someone's voting rights (disagree, but understand) but the irrational fear that allowing felons to vote would endanger our republic is farcical-- and a desperate reach.

The other troubling aspect is how sanguine some folks are at the idea of disenfranchisement -- as though it were merely an abstract question -- not something desperately important and powerful to many people. Perhaps because your right to vote is not threatened, you don't care enough about it. Perhaps I took my right to vote for granted, too. Now, however, having seen how powerful and moving the act of voting can be for someone who thought they could not vote -- how inspiring and life-changing the right to vote can be for people who thought society did not value them and now believe they have value...simply because their vote counts as much as anyone elses....I find the lack of passion distasteful and inhuman.

RuthAlice