Should Prisoners Be Allowed to Vote... Ever?

As the shouting subsides (hopefully) over the ACORN voter registration flap, two things are clear (to the rational, at least):

1. Even if Mickey Mouse is registered to vote, it doesn't mean that he can cast a vote -- though it sure would liven up my dreary polling place if he bounded in to pull the lever. (Actual voter fraud convictions -- my favorite being for "voter impersonation" -- are rarer than death from SARS.)

2. This is the latest chapter in the battle between Democrats trying to expand the number of registered voters -- and Republicans countering that effort by putting up roadblocks, ostensibly to safeguard against the phantom threat of fraud.

BUT this post is not about the ACORN contretemps. So any cut-and-paste rant about ACORN left in the comments section will be discarded faster than a Palm Beach butterfly ballot.

The truth is, very few of us wish that everyone of adult age went to the polls to cast a ballot. Maybe out there there are some ardent small-d democrats who are above partisanship, who more than anything just want the voice of The People to be heard!

The rest of us just want Our Guy to win. That means hoping and praying that the supporters of the Other Guy stay home.

It just so happens that most of the disenfranchised (including 5.3 million with criminal records!) are likely to vote Democrat. No one disputes that. Then there are the multitudes who won't be able to vote because they don't have proper photo id -- in many cases because they're car-less ... in other words, poor ... in other words, likely Democrats.

So while Democrats are on the right side in their efforts to expand and ease voting -- and Republican officials are disingenuous in their fears of voter fraud -- it's not as if Democrats are fighting for the most virtuous of reasons. Please, if our prisons and poorhouses were filled with white evangelical males, sides in this long-running Expanded Enfranchisement vs. Fear of Fraud debate would instantly flip. (In fact, almost half the prison population is African-American.)

Neither the Constitution nor the Bill or Rights includes a Right to Vote. Shocking -- until you remember that we were founded as a republic, where mostly white male landowners were entrusted (by states) to have the independence of means and thought to make a responsible decision for the rest of us. (Early on only Vermont -- surprise, surprise -- had anything close to universal suffrage.)

So let's be brutally honest: do we believe in universal suffrage? should everyone of legal age be allowed to vote? (That's not what we have now.)

Or, rather than lie to ourselves, should we come out as a country and declare that some people deserve to vote and others don't? This isn't a rhetorical question.

Let's start with Prisoners -- present and former.

Here's the reality: Today one in every 100 adults (and one out of every fifteen black men) is in prison. A total of 7 million are behind bars, on parole or on probation. Two states (Maine and Vermont) permit inmates to vote. At the other extreme, two states (Virginia and Kentucky) ban ex-felons from voting for life. (Since 2000 seven states have begun permitting some ex-felons to vote, though the procedural hurdles are daunting.)

The result: 5.3 million Americans are barred from voting in this election because of their criminal records, by far the largest group of disenfranchised voters.