February 12, 2015 - 00:02
"Only four states (New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, and Vermont) allow inmates to vote. In fourteen states, a felony conviction equals lifetime disenfranchisement" (287).
While reading this passage, I was struck deeply with confusion. I could not understand how a society that wants to encourage voting, especially in the black community, expects to reach these goals when those convicted of a felony or those that are incarcerated cannot vote. The percentage of blacks in prisons is overwhelming when one considers how many blacks are involved in illegal activity in comprison to whites and how the percentage of imprisonment is inversely proportional. This leaves whites, who have committed an equal amount of crime if not more than blacks, still voting for the legislation that they want passed; by analyzing the percentages, it is clear that the black population is going to be upset and echoe feelings of reppression because the legislation is not in their favor.
Although it is still possible for people to begin a proccess to reinstate their right to vote, it is costly and time consuming which is counterintuitive when one considers the time inmates have already wasted in prison and the lack of monetary supply considering that they have been unemployed and have built a lack of resources for recommendations to apply to other jobs.
If some policy were introduced to inform inmates in the system of what is occurring politically on the outside and then giving them a platform to vote, this could change the results of new legislation immensly. A large amount of blacks do not vote first because they do not understand politics, second because they are not informed on what is happening in politics, and third because a large percentage of them are not permitted to vote at all. Instead of deeming them as irrelevant votes due to their crimes, we could use this as a platform to inform them so that they can have the tools neccessary to ask for what they want from the government and possibly even create a bond of trust with the government inside of prison institutions.