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Essay On Disenfranchisement

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Essay On Disenfranchisement
“Voting, the cornerstone of American democracy -- the unshakeable principle that everyone should have an equal vote.” ~John Oliver. It is because I believe in this quote that I support today’s bill to Restore Voting Rights for Criminals.
When elections are hosted, we expect all of America to participate and vote. The issue here is that due to laws prohibiting criminals from voting, roughly 7 million Americans cannot vote even though a solid 75% are out of prison. (Mother Jones, 2/13/14). When a group of Americans this large can’t vote, the result of any election isn’t truly representative of the people. This simple notion destroys the concept of democracy in America. The effect of this has only increased throughout the years, with our prison …show more content…
“After Reconstruction, many southern states enacted disenfranchisement schemes to specifically target African Americans and diminish the electoral strength of newly-freed populations," said Attorney General Eric Holder. Most of our laws about voting did change following the Civil War. For example, states removed laws requiring people to own property to vote- but we also saw the rise of the voting laws. The Sentencing Project finds the felony disenfranchised laws to be, “an alternate means for wealthy elites to constrict the political power of the lower classes." After considering the arguably racist and classist origins of these laws, how they disproportionately target one race more than another, and how they remove the sense of democracy we have, it’s easy to see why these laws must be repealed.
We stand here today discussing whether we should support a bill to restore voting rights for criminals. For you to decide, I want you to deeply think about and consider those who are affected by the disenfranchisement laws. I want you to consider everything I’ve said; how these laws remove democracy, how they target black men ore than any other group, and how they’re classist and racist leftovers of the Civil War. For these reasons and more, I urge you to support a bill to restore voting rights to
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