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Florida high court sides with governor on felon voter rights

TU Curmudgeon said:
While I don' take strenuous objection to "(Almost) every argument made from the (American) (L)eft involves some kind of appeal to emotion(al) fallacy." it is also (generally) that "Almost every argument made from the American _Right_ involves some kind of appeal to emotional fallacy.".

It is also true that "The American Left" is, in general (and as far as any effective political clout is concerned) on the "right" side of the political spectrum is you consider the entire political spectrum including countries other than the United States of America.
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No they are on the left side.
 
Phys251 said:
As a sufficient but not necessary condition, if the United States Constitution literally calls it a right, it's a right.
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Call it a right, call it a privilege, call it a tuna salad sandwich, there is no general protection of it contained in the Constitution. There are amendments that prohibit using certain criteria as a basis to deny the franchise (age, sex, previous condition of servitude, etc.), but that's all. In fact, the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly contemplates the denial of the franchise to whole swaths of the population:
US Constitution said:
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.
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It may be an open question as to whether subsequent amendments prohibiting the denial of the franchise based on certain characteristics also changed how the reduction in representation is calculated, but that is of no consequence here. The states may deny the "right" to vote, or the "privilege" of voting, or the "casting of a tuna salad sandwich into the caster's preferred bucket" for any reason they wish, so long as that reason isn't one of the handful of prohibited reasons.
 
Cardinal said:
If they're not even serving terms then it's a poll tax, especially since it's arbitrarily applied. Nobody's forced to pay past parking tickets or back taxes in order to vote, but you have to pay back "felon fines?"
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The entire system of denying voting rights based on criminal activity is arbitrary, since it's only felons who are so disenfranchised. But that doesn't matter. The Fourteenth Amendment explicitly provides for disenfranchisement based on criminal activity. Unless you think it mandates disenfranchisement for petty misdemeanors, the states are perfectly able to draw whatever line they wish, so long as the line isn't based on one of the criteria prohibited by subsequent amendments. In fact, states have previously prohibited persons from voting even if their crime wasn't a felony but instead a misdemeanor crime involving moral turpitude. I'm not sure if any still do, or if there was a subsequent court case mandating only felons are subject to the clause, but the fact remains that disenfranchisement for crime is allowed, even if somewhat arbitrary.

As for "past parking tickets," absolutely the state can prevent you from voting. The state can use any method of determining who gets the franchise so long as that determination is not based on one of the prohibited characteristics laid out by the amendments. The state can say the only people who get to vote are persons born in December and that would be constitutional. Perfectly stupid, but also perfectly constitutional. The only consequence the state would suffer for such a bone-headed restriction would be a reduction in the population used to calculate House representation of about 92%, assuming an equal distribution of persons born in any particular month.

No one has to pay "back taxes" (or any tax, for that matter), as such a requirement is prohibited by the Twenty-Fourth Amendment.

This fails Constitutional muster on at least three levels:

1. It fails according to the 24th Amendement (Poll tax). Simply wrapping tax in another term doesn't change what it is.
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True, but a fine isn't a tax. Remember the decision in the Obamacare case at the Supreme Court? The entire decision turned on the payment due for failing to purchase health insurance being a tax and not a fine. Taxes are payments due the government in order to fund its legitimate activities. Fines are penalties levied against persons who have broken the law. They are not now, nor have they ever been, synonymous.

2. It fails according to the 14th Amendment ( Equal Protection Clause).
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If you mean it isn't applied to everyone who has ever committed a crime, then I've already shown you are incorrect here also. If you mean something else, please explain.

2. It fails according to every Amendment that makes reference to voting as a right.
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I think you mean "3..."

But it doesn't fail here either, since the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly condones disenfranchisement for criminal activity.

The Florida law is just a giant bucket of Constitutional fail.
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Disagree. What is even sillier is that your argument implies the following: it is constitutional to prohibit felons from voting for all time, and it is constitutional to not prohibit them from voting at all, but it is unconstitutional to allow felons to vote but only after they've done their time and paid any fines.

That is one trainwreck of an argument.
 
ludin said:
No they are on the left side.
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I see that you missed the "s far as any effective political clout is concerned)" bit in my

It is also true that "The American Left" is, in general (and as far as any effective political clout is concerned) on the "right" side of the political spectrum [if] {typo corrected} you consider the entire political spectrum including countries other than the United States of America.
(emphasis added)
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as well as ignoring the totality of my

It is also (generally) [true] {typo corrected} that "Almost every argument made from the American _Right_ involves some kind of appeal to emotional fallacy.".
​

I would hate to have to conclude that those omissions were deliberate, so would you like to address the actual points made?
 
Grizzly Adams said:
Call it a right, call it a privilege, call it a tuna salad sandwich, there is no general protection of it contained in the Constitution. There are amendments that prohibit using certain criteria as a basis to deny the franchise (age, sex, previous condition of servitude, etc.), but that's all. In fact, the Fourteenth Amendment explicitly contemplates the denial of the franchise to whole swaths of the population:
It may be an open question as to whether subsequent amendments prohibiting the denial of the franchise based on certain characteristics also changed how the reduction in representation is calculated, but that is of no consequence here. The states may deny the "right" to vote, or the "privilege" of voting, or the "casting of a tuna salad sandwich into the caster's preferred bucket" for any reason they wish, so long as that reason isn't one of the handful of prohibited reasons.
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When you read

Generally, sentenced inmates are expected to perform some type of institution maintenance or industrial work on a full-time (6 to 8 hours a day, 6 days a week) or part-time basis: Exceptions include those who are medically unable to work, a security risk, or involved full time in an approved educational or vocational training program. Maintenance work includes cooking inmate meals, laundering inmate clothing, repairing boilers, performing clerical work, and maintaining the grounds and buildings as well as many other functions necessary for the day-to-day operation of the prison. It also sometimes includes public works projects such as assisting local communities in repairing roads and assisting forestry departments in clearing land and planting trees. Inmates may also do industrial work for the prison or private companies. This work may include manufacturing products (e.g., office furniture, mattresses, and automobile tags) and providing services (e.g., data entry and automobile repair) for sale to government agencies and sometimes to the private sector6 The goods or services are sold at prices usually designed to recover costs, including manufacturing and overhead. The revenues may be used for business or prison operations.
[SOURCE]
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you see that incarceration almost always involves a requirement to perform some labour of some kind. That qualifies "incarceration" as "servitude" and indicates a potential triggering of

Amendment XV
Section 1.

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
​

and it would be interesting to see what the results of a court challenge to the constitutionality of the several (state) laws which prohibit "felons" from voting based on that proposition (which is at least arguable) would be.

Admittedly the framers of the 15[sup]th[/sup] Amendment were highly unlikely to have that position in mind when passing the 15[sup]th[/sup], BUT what is actually important when doing legal interpretation is NOT the "actual intent" but rather is the "actual wording".

That doesn't mean that the "actual wording" cannot be later amended so as to reflect the "actual intent", it simply means that "The Government" isn't allowed to get away with passing "sloppy laws".
 
Grizzly Adams said:
The entire system of denying voting rights based on criminal activity is arbitrary, since it's only felons who are so disenfranchised. But that doesn't matter. The Fourteenth Amendment explicitly provides for disenfranchisement based on criminal activity.
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Actually the

But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.
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bit in the 14[sup]th[/sup] Amendment does NOT "explicitly provides for disenfranchisement based on criminal activity" but rather it "explicitly provides" for the reduction in representation in the House of Representatives in proportion to the percentage of people who have been denied the right to vote.

The interesting thing about the sloppy wording of the 14[sup]th[/sup] is that it only refers to "male citizens".

One of the things about legal interpretation is that later legislation takes precedence over prior legislation. That means that if, for example, there is a provision in the 15[sup]th[/sup] Amendment which conflicts with a provision in the, for example, 14[sup]th[/sup] Amendment, then it is the provisions of the 15[sup]th[/sup] Amendment which are operational and NOT the provisions of the 14[sup]th[/sup] Amendment.

However, having just looked at the provisions of the 14[sup]th[/sup] Amendment again, I wonder if the "representation reduction" provisions are actually applied when determining the number of seats in the House of Representatives and, if so how. I can see two different ways to apply that "representation reduction" and those are:

  1. the total number of seats allocated to a State would be determined on the basis of comparing ONLY the people who were NOT denied the right to vote
    • i.e. (and I'll just use three states to keep the example simple) if all three states have a population of !,000,000, while "State A" has 100,000 "Felons Not Permitted To Vote", "State B" has 300,000 "FNPTV", and "State C" has 500,000 "FNPTV" and if there were 300 seats in the national legislature authorized, then "State A" would receive 129 seats. "State B" would receive 100 seats, and "State C" would receive 71 seats)
    *
    and
    *
  2. the total number of seats would be divided by 3 so that each State was entitled to a MAXIMUM of 1/3rd of the seats but with the number of actual seats allotted reduced proportionately and only a fraction actually permitted to be filled.
    • i.e. (and I'll just use three states to keep the example simple) if all three states have a population of !,000,000, while "State A" has 100,000 "Felons Not Permitted To Vote", "State B" has 300,000 "FNPTV", and "State C" has 500,000 "FNPTV" and if there were 300 seats in the national legislature authorized, then "State A" would receive (100 x 0.9) 90 seats, "State B" would receive (100 x 0.7) 70 seats, and "State C" would receive (100 x 0.5) 50 seats.
When you take a look at the statistics of "Number of People by State Who Cannot Vote Due to a Felony Conviction", I get the sneaking feeling that NEITHER of the two above are actually applied and that the representation of the several states is based on total population WITHOUT regard to the 14[sup]th[/sup] Amendment.

That would mean that either

  1. just about every federal election since the passage of the 15[sup]th[/sup] Amendment has been invalidly conducted;
    *
    or
    *
  2. whatever "constitutional validity" there ever was for the disenfranchisement of felons has been long since spent.
 
Grizzly Adams said:
No one has to pay "back taxes" (or any tax, for that matter), as such a requirement is prohibited by the Twenty-Fourth Amendment.
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Absolutely correct.

Grizzly Adams said:
True, but a fine isn't a tax. Remember the decision in the Obamacare case at the Supreme Court? The entire decision turned on the payment due for failing to purchase health insurance being a tax and not a fine. Taxes are payments due the government in order to fund its legitimate activities. Fines are penalties levied against persons who have broken the law. They are not now, nor have they ever been, synonymous.
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Again, absolutely correct.

Not only that, but a tax where the rate is set at 0.00000000000% is still a tax.

Grizzly Adams said:
Disagree. What is even sillier is that your argument implies the following: it is constitutional to prohibit felons from voting for all time, and it is constitutional to not prohibit them from voting at all, but it is unconstitutional to allow felons to vote but only after they've done their time and paid any fines.

That is one trainwreck of an argument.
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Again, quite correct. IF (and that is the point that we disagree on) it is "constitutional" to prohibit "felons" from voting at all, THEN the States can make that prohibition as long-lasting and/or conditional as they feel like making it. But, to argue that any such prohibition is either an all or nothing choice is, on a good day, ludicrous.

PS - Since the several states have the legislative authority to determine what is, and what is not, a "felony" then there is no prohibition on any state enacting legislation making "illegal parking" a "Class Z Felony" and permanently barring anyone who is convicted for parking in a "Handicapped Zone" when they do not have the requisite permission to do so from voting for the rest of their lives. (Heck, I might even support such legislation.)
 
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