Talk:Felony disenfranchisement

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US Disenfranchisement inherited from England

The author states: "The practice of disenfranchisement was transplanted to America by English settlers." For many reasons, this seems unlikely. The author should substantiate this or remove it. --Kjb 19:57, 26 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

US Centric

I added the section "other countries", but this is still to little for a global encyclopedia.-- ExpImp^talkcon 16:40, 1 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If it's true that "Most democracies give ex-offenders the same voting rights as other citizens", as the article currently says, then there's little need to discuss other countries, unless there's a history of those countries formerly barring felons from voting and eventually abolishing that. Not every topic applies equally to every country. PaulGS 04:11, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It's rather a poor idea to create an article with different sections for every country in the world. If you actually managed to write a section for every one, the article would be too big. In any case such an article would be called something like disenfranchisement for serious criminal offences since no civil law countries and few if any common law countries retain a felony-misdemeanour distinction. While it might be nice to have a more general article, renaming this one Felony disenfranchisement in the United States should do for now. Blue-Haired Lawyer 14:49, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Racism

It seems that the charge of racism is a bit of a stretch. Maybe racial discrimination would be more appropriate, but even then one may argue that just because somebody argued that it is racially motivated does not make it true. User:Kotika98 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.94.211.118 (talk) 08:11, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In this day and age I don't believe that it's because of racism. However I reckon that in every state where this system was used it was for one purpose only - to deny more black people the vote. Notice how many of the specific laws for this system were enshrined in law after the 1870s and how most of these states are southern states. Whatever, the more I read about the great democratic USA, the less democratic I realise that it is. Excercising ones' right to vote is a basic human right and human rights can be withdrawn if a person is serving time but not afterwards and certainly not for life. That's just barbaric but then so are many things that the USA continues to do - death penalty, starting wars for oil, attacking countries with the sense to vote for socialist parties, allowing late term abortions, going to church in droves, etc.--Xania

^talk 22:59, 30 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Disfranchisement v. Disenfranchisement

Both mean the same thing, but which is preferable? As a legal term, the former is prefered in law, but the latter lay distortion appears to be gaining ground in general media. Can we get a ruling from the judges, please? Thanks. Foofighter20x (talk) 03:34, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The latter is by far the more common usage per WP:MOS it should be the title as to the "preferred" legal usage: LANE v. WILSON, 307 U.S. 268 (1939), HARMAN v. FORSSENIUS, 380 U.S. 528 (1965), HARPER v. VIRGINIA BD. OF ELECTIONS, 383 U.S. 663 (1966). (And I'd dozens of scholarly articles) -- Electiontechnology (talk) 03:59, 29 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Third-party response per RfC: This doesn't really belong in RfC and probably should be removed. Typically RfC is used for entrenched disagreements (ie discussions with more than two comments), discussions with wider significance (naming conventions), and such like. In any case this a disagreement over spelling rather than style.

But since I began a response anyway...

Well for starters, disenfranchisement sounds much more natural to me. On a most objective measure:

Usage: Disenfranchisement gets 2,840,000 hits in Google while disfranchisement gets 89,000. I get similar results on Google Scholar: 22,600 for disenfranchisement and 6,470 for disfranchisement. And while the results on Google Books are 2,060 on disenfranchisement and 3,290 on disfranchisement, the results are disfranchisement mostly relate to books published before 1950. When you only count books published in 1950 or later, the figures are essentially equal 2,010 to 2,030.

Dictionaries: My American Oxford English Dictionary (it comes with my Mac) gives priority to disenfranchisement while listing disfranchisement as an alternative spelling. And my Oxford English Dictionary does the same.

As far as I can see disfranchisement is mainly archaic but does enjoy some current academic (and possibly legal) use. Disenfranchisement is by far the most used and its use in academic works outnumbers disfranchisement by more than three to one. Disenfranchisement should be used and its alternative spelling noted. Blue-Haired Lawyer 14:34, 21 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comment, I'd go for disenfranchisement myself, since it is the logical opposite of enfranchisement. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:46, 25 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Disenfranchisement. I've worked in this field of law before, and have never heard "disfranchisement" used modernly. On Google, "Felony disenfranchisement" gets 20,100 hits, "Felony disfranchisement" gets 1,300; on Google Books, "Felony disenfranchisement" gets 195 hits, "Felony disfranchisement" gets 22. bd2412 T 05:34, 28 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ireland

Just being a stickler for terms, I suppose, but the Republic of Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom; hence, any discussion of it belongs in a different section. Perhaps this would be fixed by previous assertions on the organization of the article, however. 74.141.107.176 (talk) 00:26, 17 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've moved it to its own section, but haven't had time yet to dot the i's & cross the t's. Rodhull andemu 23:35, 30 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Loss of rights due to felony conviction proposed merge

That other article seems to cover other issues such as not allowing felons to possess firearms that are not the same as disenfranchisement as people usually think of it, so I would recommend against the merge. Tisane ^talk/_stalk 17:31, 8 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The arguments section is a bit thin. There is a very fundamental reason why prisoners should be allowed to vote. Many rights exist as firewalls against potential state exploitation. For example, the English right to silence (right against self-incrimination in the US) came into being because confessions were being forced out of people. The protection against being tried twice for the same crime exists to prevent weak cases being forced through by just prosecuting until there is a conviction. In exactly the same way, the universal right to vote protects democracy because it prevents the state from deciding who does and does not have a voice. In the Soviet Union for example, dissidents lost their rights because the state had the power to declare them insane. Once the state has the power to decide who does and does not get a vote then it is no longer democratic. If I do not like the way that somebody else votes, then I must use my vote to silence them. And this is where the responsibility should be.