Photo : Marc Piscotty/Justin Sullivan ( Getty Images This week, Bernie Sanders became the first 2020 Democratic presidential candidate to voice his support of felons’ right to vote—erupting in a mass debate amongst other candidates chiming in on the crucial issue. Advertisement “You’re paying a price, you committed a crime, you’re in jail,” Sanders said during a town hall in Iowa on the issue. “That’s bad. But you’re still living in American society and you have a right to vote. I believe in that, yes, I do.” Meanwhile, candidates Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren have opposed Sanders’ position; Buttigieg has stated that he doesn’t support felons’ voting rights while incarcerated, while Warren was more succinct in her response: “I’m not there yet.” What’s the debate about, exactly? The debate revolves around the right to vote for prisoners; currently only two states, Maine and Vermont (Sanders’ home state), allow for felons to vote behind bars. For context, here’s how the rest of the states practice their rights for prisoners to vote, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures: In 14 states including Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Utah (in addition to D.C.), felons only lose their right to vote while incarcerated but are restored their right after incarceration. In 22 states, including New Jersey and Texas, felons lose their right to vote while incarcerated and usually while on parole or probation and are then restored their right to vote. They may have to pay fees or fines before they can vote again, however. In 12 states, including Alabama and Arizona, felons lose their right to vote indefinitely for certain crimes and may only have their right restored if pardoned. Advertisement In total, this means some 48 states deprive prisoners the right to vote at some point or another. According to the Sentencing Project, this also means 6.1 million people in our country can’t vote because they’re incarcerated. And there are a number of other things to consider regarding prisoners’ rights, particularly the issue of race and racial bias within the criminal justice system. Despite comprising 37% of the U.S. population, people of color account for 67% of the prison population. A number of advocacy groups argue that certain minorities, like black people, are significantly more likely to be arrested for an issue like marijuana possession than white people—helping fuel an unequal justice system that punishes some more than others. (The U.S. also incarcerates more individuals than any other country in the world, due in part to this increase of drug-related arrests.) Advertisement As GQ writes, there are also some 465,000 presumed innocent people in the justice system at any given moment who can’t afford bail, meaning their right to vote is at risk, too, in addition to those who’ve been exonerated for wrongful convictions. Photo : Justin Sullivan. ( Getty Images Advertisement Why are so many candidates debating the issue right now? Only Sanders and candidate Pete Buttigieg have been 100% explicit about their opinion on felons’ right to vote. Buttigieg opposed the right for prisoners to vote while incarcerated during a CNN town hall with Anderson Cooper. Advertisement “Part of the punishment when you are convicted of a crime and you’re incarcerated is you lose certain rights,” he said. “You lose your freedom. And I think during that period it does not make sense to have an exception for the right to vote.” Currently, however, most candidates are staying pretty vague on the issue, likely because Sanders is facing heat for his opinion. Advertisement Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke have expressed vague intentions to “re-think” or have a “conversation’ regarding felons” right to vote. Warren disagreed somewhat with Bernie in her short statement. Meanwhile, Trump has long opposed felons’ right to vote. Either way, the issue will become a significant one as 2020 comes our way—and you can expect candidates to take a stand soon, with Sanders’ stance having forced their hand. Advertisement What’s the worst that could happen, if they couldn’t vote? Well, you could argue we’ve already seen it in practice. In 2000, George W. Bush won 25 electoral votes from the state of Florida, allowing him to defeat Al Gore. As Quartz reported in conjunction with the Sentencing Project, there were some 827,000 inmates and felons who weren’t granted the right to vote that year in Florida; researchers at the Sentencing Project estimated that roughly 68.7% of those incarcerated would have voted Democrat. Advertisement If just over one-fourth of that group had voted—27.2%, to be exact—it would easily have secured Gore’s presidency (even a 13.1% turnout might have even secured his election). Florida has since restored the rights for felons to vote after parole or probation and who have not been convicted of murder or felony sexual offenses. In other words, we might be living in a very different world right now if they had been given the right to vote from the start. Advertisement For more from Lifehacker, be sure to follow us on Instagram @lifehackerdotcom .<doc-sep>When Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said that he supported allowing those behind bars to vote from prison, he drew outrage. But Bernie’s plan isn’t as bananas as his critics would make it out to be. At the most basic, Sander's argument is simple: citizens have a right to vote. Being in prison doesn't change that. To be clear, that is a slightly different conception of the rights afforded to those convicted that has traditionally been understood in the common law . Initially, incarceration was seen as losing rights of citizenship and conceived of as a, at least temporary, "civic death." As Justice Earl Warren put it in the 1958 case Trop v. Dulles: “Citizenship is not a right that expires upon misbehavior." And why should it? After all, incarceration does not entail loss of other fundamental rights, such as freedom of religion. In the United States, however, this understanding has done little to change our practices towards voting rights for inmates, despite significant changes elsewhere. In fact, the U.S. is an outlier compared to other democracies. Canada, Denmark, Germany, Israel, Spain, South Africa, and 15 other countries all allow felons to vote in prison with another 14 countries allowing some felons to do so. Moreover, there's nothing in our constitution that would prevent us from giving rights to those behind bars, and plenty in our conception of an inclusive democracy seems to strongly support enfranchisement. Indeed, the only part of the Constitution that explicitly deals with felony disenfranchisement is the 14th Amendment passed in the aftermath of the Civil War. In addition to granting African American men the right to vote, it also stipulated that states could continue to deny individuals suffrage for “participation in rebellion, or other crime.” But states don't have to do this. Today, as established by Richardson v. Ramirez in 1974, states may still disenfranchise those in prison and need not re-enfranchise them upon release. Although some states automatically enfranchise individuals when they're released, many others do not, either mandating a set amount of years or even requiring a petition to the governor. Two states, Iowa and Kentucky, impose a lifetime voting ban for all convicted felons. That practice, applied both during and after incarceration, strips citizens of their essential rights and acts as a permanent punishment, regardless of what a judge or jury decided was just. Two states, however, have avoided these issues entirely. Both Vermont and Maine allow everyone, even those behind bars for murder, to cast their ballots. Just as the 35 countries around the world that allow at least some inmates to vote, Maine and Vermont have yet to see ill consequences from doing this. What Sanders is proposing isn't radical, nor is it a new idea. It also need not be partisan. In fact, Mike Donohue, a spokesman for the Vermont Republican Party, perhaps offered an even better defense of the practice than Sanders did. In a 2018 interview with NBC he explained, "The last thing we want to do is start putting up insurmountable barriers to participation in civic life because someone may have been convicted of a crime." Adding, "People’s right to vote is sacred."<doc-sep>Jesse Watters, co-host of "The Five," suggested Tuesday that Democrats wanted to grant felons voting rights so they could "change the rules" in American elections. "The reason they're doing this ... is because they can't persuade enough actual voters about their ideas so they have to create new voters," he said on "The Five." "They got rocked in 2016 so instead of trying to change their message, they're just trying to change the rules." Watters likened that proposal to Democratic pushes to abolish the electoral college and add justices to the Supreme Court. Co-host Juan Williams responded by noting that Democrats won the popular vote in 2016. "Democrats got more votes than Republicans in 2016." "All of them were felons," co-host Greg Gutfeld joked in response. MEGHAN MCCAIN AND WHOOPI GOLDBERG CLASH OVER VOTING RIGHTS FOR BOSTON BOMBER: 'HE IS A TERRORIST' Watters' comments came after Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the frontrunner among declared Democratic candidates as of Tuesday, indicated he would be willing to let Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev vote as part of his plan to extend that right to felons in prison. Regardless of what Democrats intended, Watters predicted that policy would ruin their electoral prospects. "They just handled Donald Trump the wedgiest of wedge issues," he said before asking Williams if Democrats actually wanted to lose in 2020. "This is made to order for Donald Trump," Watters added. Sanders' proposal, Watters suggested, would result in corruption and fraud. "[Democrats] have totally undercut their messaging on election integrity," he said. BERNIE SANDERS BACKERS UPSET WITH PETE BUTTIGIEG OVER TRUMP COMPARISON Sanders, who faced a wave of criticism for his proposal, defended felons' voting rights as part of American democracy. "I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy," he said Monday. "Yes, even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away and you say, ‘That guy committed a terrible crime, not gonna let him vote. Well, that person did that. Not gonna let that person vote,’ you’re running down a slippery slope," he added. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP According to polling from April, Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden gathered the most support of Democratic voters in New Hampshire. Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., have both called for a restoration of felons' voting rights after their release from prison. Buttigieg, however, disagreed with Sanders' proposal to let felons vote while they remained in prison.<doc-sep>(CNN) — Sen. Kamala Harris Tuesday didn’t definitively say whether she supports felons being able to vote from prison, but she feels “there has to be serious consequence for the most extreme types of crimes.” When asked at a CNN Town Hall on Monday if convicted felons should be allowed to vote while in prison, the Democratic presidential candidate said, “I think we should have that conversation.” Harris was asked to expand on her answer the next day at an event in New Hampshire, and she said it’s a “complex issue.” “I’m going think about it and I’m going to talk to experts and I’m going to make a decision and I will let you know,” she said. “We right now have got a lot of work to do with the people in our country who have served their time and have been prohibited from voting,” Harris said. She added, “Currently in our country there are 6 million people who have served their time and are still prohibited from voting, and that has been an area of focus for me for quite some time, and we’ve got to address that and address that immediately, and so that is one of my first areas of focus and concern.” But Harris said she keeps her history as a prosecutor at the forefront of her mind when considering the idea. “Do I think that people who commit murder, people who are terrorists, should be deprived of their rights? Yeah, I do,” she said. “I’m a prosecutor, I believe that in terms of, there has to be serious consequence for the most extreme types of crimes.” When she was asked specifically if Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should not be allowed to vote while he’s in prison, Harris demurred. “I’m saying that I will weigh in specifically, but that’s a value that I bring to it, yeah,” she said. The conversation about whether felons should be allowed to vote while incarcerated kicked into high gear after Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders spoke about it Monday. Sanders, also a presidential hopeful, said Monday at a CNN Town Hall that he thinks everyone should have the right to vote. “This is a democracy and we have got to expand that democracy and I believe every single person does have the right to vote,” Sanders said. Asked if sex offenders, the Boston marathon bomber, terrorists and murderers should be included in that group, Sanders said, “Yes, even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away and you say, ‘Well, that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote. Well, that person did that. Not going to let that person vote,’ you’re running down a slippery slope.”<doc-sep>
Sen. Bernie Sanders has long fought to restore voting rights for felons who’ve completed their prison sentences. Now the presidential candidate wants to go a big step further – arguing that those currently behind bars should be able to vote too. FLORIDA MOVES TO REGISTER FORMER FELONS TO VOTE Asked on the campaign trail in Muscatine, Iowa on Saturday if those imprisoned should have the right to vote, the independent senator from Vermont who’s making his second straight bid for the Democratic nomination answered: "I think that is absolutely the direction we should go.” "In my state, what we do is separate. You’re paying a price, you committed a crime, you’re in jail. That's bad," Sanders explained. "But you’re still living in American society and you have a right to vote. I believe in that, yes, I do.” SANDERS UNLOADS ON TRUMP AT SHARPTON CONFERENCE Vermont and Maine are the only states to allow felons currently serving their sentences to vote. The issue of voting rights for felons is in the spotlight in Iowa, the state that votes first in the presidential caucus and primary calendar. The Hawkeye state and Kentucky are the only two in the nation to permanently disenfranchise everyone with felony convictions from voting. Iowa GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds is pushing for a constitutional amendment to allow convicts to have their voting rights restored after they’ve served their sentences. But last week, the Republican-controlled state-Senate torpedoed the plan, likely killing it for the year. Sanders took to Twitter at the time to write “this is a disappointing setback for voting rights in Iowa.” Voting rights in 36 states and the District of Columbia are restored to felons after they’ve completed the sentences, with the laws varying to factor in parole and probation. Presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts was asked about the issue a week ago, as the Massachusetts Democrat was campaigning in Iowa. She called for felons who’ve served their time to have the right to vote. But she stopped short of advocating that those actually in prison be able to vote. "While they’re incarcerated, I think that’s something we can have more conversation about," she said. FLORIDA PASSES RESTORING VOTING RIGHTS FOR FELONS Last November, voters in Florida approved a constitutional amendment restoring the right to vote for the 1.4 million felons who’ve finished serving their sentences. Florida was the most populous of 10 states that permanently disenfranchised some people with criminal convictions. Last April, Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York signed an executive order restoring voting rights for felons on parole. And in 2016, Virginia’s governor at the time, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, took executive action to restore voting rights to former felons. Opponents of allowing those in prison to vote argue that if you’re not willing to follow the law, then you should not have a role in making law for everyone, either directly by voting on referendums and ballot initiatives or indirectly by electing lawmakers. They point out that that the whole point of incarceration is to separate felons from society. The Republican National Committee said Democratic attempts to expand the pool of voters friendly to their party is behind the push to allow felons serving time to vote. “From suggesting that illegal immigrants should be able to vote, to trying to lower the voting age to 16, to now proposing convicted felons behind bars should be able to vote, Democrats are once again trying to rewrite the rules for their own political agenda. When they can’t win at the ballot box, Democrats instead try to rig the system in their favor,” RNC spokesperson Mandi Merritt told Fox News.