Voting Rights: Lost and Found?

As we’ve noted thus far, a country’s citizens can lose their freedoms. We’ve discussed the political situation in Venezuela, for example. Its socialist government has ensured that civil rights for many Venezuelans are largely a thing of the past.

But did you know that our U.S. Constitution actually supports the loss of some people’s rights? During this past Monday’s televised CNN “town hall meeting,” 2020 presidential candidate and self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders set off a great deal of controversy. He had been asked whether he supported the expansion of voting to convicted felons, such as the Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, and those convicted of sexual assaults. Sanders responded affirmatively, stating that the Constitution states that “everybody can vote.”

Felons, however, lose the right to vote. Their crimes can occasionally be pardoned but, typically, they serve time in prison and, at least during that time period, lose voting privileges. A person who knowingly breaks the law understands the inherent risk and apparently is willing to take it. Since a felon has already shown disregard for the rule of law, do we then want to invite him or her to help make or change it?

Our Constitution remains the standard of measurement for policy and law questions. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld such loss (“disenfranchisement”) of voting rights when it referred specifically to The Fourteenth Amendment in the 1974 case entitled Richardson v. Ramirez.

This is just one of the many types of situations that the Founders needed to foresee and wrestle with as they were drafting our Constitution. Lawmakers today continue to wrestle with Constitutional issues. Nevertheless, changes have been few with the total number of Amendments remaining at 27.