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Showing posts with label FelonVoting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label FelonVoting. Show all posts
Getting rid of collateral penalties for criminals

Getting rid of collateral penalties for criminals

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is informing employers that they cannot refuse to hire job applicants with criminal backgrounds based solely on those past crimes.

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. . . .


This is part of a larger process to reduce the penalties for criminals.

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. . . .
Felons organizing to vote as a blockin DC

Felons organizing to vote as a blockin DC

With felons able to vote, it was probably only a matter of time before they started organizing to vote. Here is an example in the Washington Times from DC.

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. . . .
My newest Fox News piece: Guess What, Felons Favor Democrats

My newest Fox News piece: Guess What, Felons Favor Democrats

My newest piece starts this way:

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. . . .


The WSJ had this follow up story.
9th Circuit decision gives felons the right to vote while they are serving in prison

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.

A small part of my discussion on felons voting in my book Freedomnomics.

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. . . .
New Op-ed up at Fox News: Letting felons vote

New Op-ed up at Fox News: Letting felons vote

The newest piece starts off like this:

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. . . .
Even Convicted Felons Can Use Guns Legitimately for Self-Defense

Even Convicted Felons Can Use Guns Legitimately for Self-Defense

Felons getting the right to vote

Felons getting the right to vote

`On April 5, 2007, Governor Crist persuaded Florida’s clemency board to restore voting rights to about 800,000 former prisoners.

Crist’s action was vigorously opposed by Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, as well as by former governor Jeb Bush. Under the new rules, about 80 percent of the disenfranchised whose crimes were not classified as “violent” will automatically have heir voting rights restored, so long as they have paid any restitution to victims and have no pending criminal charges.

This measure will largely exclude about two hundred thousand people defined as “violent career criminals,” murderers and sexual offenders, who must submit to an investigation of their cases and a hearing before a clemency board. In practical terms, the vast majority of these former prisoners will never vote again. This raises a basic question about the “limits” of American democracy, and the danger in restricting the electoral franchise. . . .


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.

Thanks to Jack Langer for sending me this link.
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