Criminal And Voting Rights
Criminals and people who have committed felonies are denied voting rights in the US. In the recent elections, nearly 3.9 million voters had no access to ballots, or voting rights because they were convicted criminals and felons. Out of these people several were African Americans and actually many had been discharged of their crime also. However, they were still denied voting rights and it actually affects the African Americans. |
The human rights watch committee reports that western countries deny many people their basic voting rights because of convictions. The US is the only country which perhaps has the largest amount of prisoners who are on records. Nearly two million people are supposedly in the prisons of America.
This law is an offshoot of the medieval times law in England when criminals were banished from the society. The criminals were denied property rights and right to employment. However, in the US, the voting rights are denied. The constitutional law states that the voting rights cannot be denied to any individual based on race, color, sex, and previous state. The voting rights also vary from state to state.
While most of the states deny the voting rights to felons, there are four states that form an exception and they are Maine, Massachusetts, Vermont and Utah. However, prisoners who are held in prisons cannot vote in any state but people with record of felony and released still have their voting rights in some states. However, the human rights commissions feel this rule needs to be changed.
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