Political Crimes and Voting

POLITICAL CRIME
VOTING RIGHTS
The standard sense of the phrase, a political crime is an action deemed illegal by a government in order to control real or imagine threats to its survival, at the expense of a range of human rights and freedoms. Thus actions which are not criminal per se, meaning that they are not anti-social, but pro-social, are criminality at the convenience of the group holding power. In criminology, a political crime is an act or omission prejudicial to the interests of the state or government like espionage, sedition and treason. Political crimes generally arise from political disturbances. It includes offenses arising from attack on the political order. Extradition treaties evidences that political crimes involve violence and uprising of violent political disturbances. Historically, the term refers to conspiracy, and illegal acts that are designed to undermine an existing government and threaten its survival.
The issue of voting rights in the United States has been contentious throughout history. Eligibility to vote in the U.S. is determined by both federal and state law. Currently, only citizens can vote in U.S. elections although this has not always been the case. Who is a citizen is governed on a national basis by federal law. In the absence of a federal law or constitutional amendment, each state is given considerable discretion to establish qualifications for suffrage and candidacy within its own jurisdiction. When the country was founded, in most states, only white men with real property such as land or sufficient wealth for taxation were permitted to vote. Freed Americans could vote in four states. Unprotected white men, almost all women, and all other people of color were denied the franchise. At the time of the American Civil War, most white men were allowed to vote, whether or not they owned property. Literacy tests, poll taxes, and even religious tests were used in various places, and most women, people of color, and Native Americans still could not vote.
The United States Constitution, in Article VI, section 3, states that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." The Constitution, however, leaves the determination of voting qualifications to the individual states. Over time, the federal role in elections has increased through amendments to the Constitution and enacted legislation, such as the Voting Right Act of 1965 (Harper, 1898). Remember that the Heritage Foundation and the right wing extremists joined together and started their propaganda campaign because of the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Right Act 1965. At least four of the fifteen post-civil war constitution amendments were ratified specifically to extend voting rights to different groups of citizens. These extensions state that voting cannot be denied or abridged based on the following:
• Birth- "All persons born or naturalized" "are citizens" of the U.S. and the U.S. State where they reside (14th Amendment, 1868).
• "Race, color, or previous condition of servitude" (15th Amendment, 1870)
• "On account of sex" (19th Amendment, 1920)
• In Washington, D.C., presidential elections after 164 years suspension by U.S. Congress (23rd Amendment, 1961)
• For federal elections "By reason of failure to pay any poll tax" (24th Amendment, 1964)
• (For state elections) Taxes - (Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663 (1966))
• "Who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state or by any state on account of age' (26th Amendment, 1971).
In addition, the 17th Amendment provided for the direct election of United States Senators.
The "right to vote" is not explicitly stated in the U.S. Constitution except in the above referenced amendment, and only in reference to the fact that the franchise cannot be denied or abridged based solely on the aforementioned qualifications. In other words, the "right to vote" is perhaps better understood, in layman's terms, as only prohibiting certain forms of legal discrimination in establishing qualifications for suffrage. States may deny the "right to vote" for other reasons.
For example, many states require eligible citizens to register to vote a set number of days prior to the election in order to vote. More controversial restrictions include those laws that prohibit convicted felons from voting or, as seen in Bush v. Gore, dispute as to what rules apply in counting or recounting ballots.
The voting rights of convicted felons are regulated by the 50 states and the District of Columbia. State Laws affecting felons voting rights vary widely, ranging from Maine and Vermont, where felons are permitted to vote while incarcerated, to Kentucky and Virginia, where voting rights of felons may be restored only by application to the governor. Some states permit convicted felons to resume voting after they have been released from prison. Other states provide for restoration of voting rights after completion of parole. Another group of states permit convicted felons to vote after they have completed all forms of supervised release. Some states restrict felons' voting rights based upon criteria such as the type of crime committed.
Federal laws do not address the voting rights of convicted felons. The regulation of felons' voting takes place at the state level, and varies from state to state. The Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is cited as the authority for state laws curtailing felons' right to vote. The Fourteenth Amendment provides that "no state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," but does not prohibit the abridgment of voting rights on grounds of "participation in rebellion, or other crime."
Two states, Maine and Vermont, do not place restrictions on the right of convicted felons to vote; felons in Maine and Vermont may vote while they are incarcerated. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia do prohibit incarcerated felons from voting, but permit convicted felons to resume voting when they are released from prison. Those 13 states are Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Utah (Gould, 2010).
In 2000 Bush v. Gore, ruling manual recounts of presidential ballots in Florida could not move ahead because of inconsistent evaluation standards in different countries. The court's conservative majority cited the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution for its reasoning. Stopping the tally meant Republican George W. Bush, who was then narrowly leading in the decisive state, would become president, defeating Vice President Al Gore. This was not our first disputed one. In 1876, Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote in the presidential race, with Republican Rutherford B. Hayes also trailing in the initial elector vote. Republicans protested, and to resolve the dispute, Congress created a bipartisan commission that included five Supreme Court justices. It was Justice Joseph Bradley who proved the swing vote, siding with Hayes and giving the Republican a 185-184 electoral vote win. Also, in 1856 Dred Scott v. Sandford declaring Congress could not ban slavery in the territories and that blacks were barred from citizenship. The appeal was argued February 1856, and a ruling came two days after President James Buchanan inauguration in March 1857. The new president in fact had asked the court to time its decision until after the election but before being sworn into office. He hoped that would defuse the slavery issue by putting it beyond political debate. And like others, the Democrat hoped the court's ruling would carry legitimacy among citizens in the North and South, an ultimately naive view.
The election was noteworthy for controversy over the awarding of Florida's 25 electoral votes, the subsequent recount process in that state, and the unusual event of the winning candidate having received fewer popular votes than the runner-up (Wolter, Jergovic, and Murphy (2003). This marked only the fourth election in U.S. history in which the eventual winner failed to win a plurality of the popular vote after the elections of 1824, 1876, and 1888). Later studies have reached conflicting opinions on who would have won the recount if it had been allowed to proceed.
Voting fraud has long been a concern of activists who argue that people can easily register under the names of deceased citizens, double register, or even vote without citizenship, thus compromising the democratic system American holds dear. Yet critics say that voter fraud is an exaggerated and even nonexistent issue, and that measures like those being taken in Florida only disenfranchise certain communities for political reasons.
This new Republican Party is determined to return the United States back to before 1965 and is intent disenfranchising minorities and women. They came pretty close this election. We can't sit on our laurels for two years like we did after the 2008 election. It is time to get these extreme right wings nuts out of our Congress and out of our Government. Here is the biggest con job that these Republicans, extremists of hatred, and the extreme wealthy been pulling. Jesus talked about being careful of rich people and clergy. Jesus mentioned that it is easier for a camel to get through an eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into heaven. Which means these rich people causing all this trouble would go to Hell? But what does these republicans, extremists of hatred, and extreme wealthy do, they claim to be good Christians to deceive people and then demand all these things that you know will only bring abuse, misery, despair and death to people. Now it just cannot get any better than that in seeing the total con job these people have been pulling. And will they stop nope, because they think they are the job creators in which they have gotten so much help for. Talk about arrogant jerks they are at the top of the list. Corrupt, as the day is long as the rich even have the nerve enough to tall President Obama to follow the Romney policies. And every step of the way they will deceive you. Hypocrites, because they have not even followed the teachings of Jesus or whatever their religious faith is, except to desire and worship greed and crave power where they think they are God.
It goes without saying that the theoretical justification for requiring obedience to society's laws from all citizens often does not work out as it should in practice. Elections and campaigns are more often than not corrupted by greed. Choosing among several inadequate candidates is often less than satisfying, and voter participation is low among several inadequate candidates is often less than satisfying, and voter participation is low among fully qualified voters. But at least democratic social theory attempts to justify the demand for legal obedience. At less we possess an ethical ideal for this form of political being. At least a citizen is asked to obey laws not because the elite demands obedience but because the laws are perceived to derive from the will of the people. No matter how imperfect its application, the ideal of a democratic polity deserves our admiration. And yet all these ideas are utterly discarded by policymakers and the citizenry alike when it comes to felon disenfranchisement. Suddenly, democratic ideas are perceived to be incapable of insuring a society's security, and the right to vote, to participate actively in one's own polity, is demoted to a mere privilege granted on basis of good behavior and economic prosperity rather than a basic human right.
A polity that legislates restrictive voting does not fulfill the basic criterion for popular representation. It might be objected that felons are not the only people excluded by voting laws; citizens younger than eighteen are also forbidden from casting their ballot. The major difference between a child and a felon is that the child looks forward to voting someday. He or she can anticipate eventually having access to full political participation. In polities where permanent felon disenfranchisement is the norm, the felon by contrast is barred from political participation. The felon has nothing to look forward to in such a polity, and lacks any hope of ever being fully integrated into this society; it is not undemocratic to temporarily forbid someone from voting in the expectation that they will eventually be eligible. The voting rights on minors are a pragmatic issue that can be debated in terms of the age at which a minor is capable of making intelligent political choices. Felon disenfranchisement is different; firstly because it is often permanent; secondly because it makes the right to vote contingent on one's obedience to the law, whereas in a true democracy one's duty to obey the law is contingent, the duty to obey the law is called into question from the vantage point of legal theory.
It is undemocratic to permanently bar a citizen bar any citizen, no matter how heinous his or her crime from political participation in society at large. A government of the people departs from democracy when it bars felons from voting. The policy that practices such discrimination has no legal right to insist on obedience to its laws, insomuch as felon barred from voting is not subject to laws that require the consent of the governed. Forbidding the felon to vote makes of his or her consent a dead issue. A polity that does not ask for the consent of the governed is not democracy. According to social contract theory, it is legitimate for a state to demand obedience from its citizens, because these citizens exist in a reciprocal relationship with their rulers and actively contribute to the creation of society's laws. Felon disenfranchisement violates this reciprocal relationship and makes a mockery of the concept of popular representation.
Felon disenfranchisement is not only practically ineffective at deterring crime. It is itself a crime. It is a crime to imprison citizens according to the implicit terms of a social contract and then to deny to them the right to intervene in that contract and to contest its terms through voting. The political right to vote is logically prior to duty to obey the laws of the society within which one is wrong. If a citizen is denied the franchise, he or she has no obligation to obey the laws of that society. According to classical social contract theory, any violation of the legal code of a society which unequally distributes the franchise cannot properly be understood to be a crime, because the category crime presumes that one violates a set of mutually agreed upon rules. When felon disenfranchisement is accepted as a normative mode of governance, this effectively means that people are being punished for violating laws it was not their legal duty to obey.
According to Manza and Unger in Lock out: felon disenfranchisement and American democracy (Oxford University Press, 2006), 5.4 million Americans, amounting to one in every forty voting-age adults is currently barred from voting due to a felony conviction. Allard and Mauer demonstrate in Regaining the vote: an assessment of activity relating to felon disenfranchisement laws (The Sentencing Project, 2000), that 5.4 million Americans translate into thirteen percent of all African-American males, seven times the national average.
No Law can be legitimately issued by a polity that administers the right to vote in a discriminatory manner. Felon disenfranchisement impedes not only just punishments; it also calls into question the internal coherence of criminal law within a democracy. A prisoner in a polity that practices felon disenfranchisement may have violated ethical norms, but to call this person a felon, which is a legal category, the law must be applied democratically. In the absence of an internally coherent policy for the administration, we have no way to distinguish between a political dissident and political dissidents become everyday criminals. It is in the interest of justice to keep these distinctions intact. Felon disenfranchisement is the greatest obstacle to the internal cogency of American criminal law.
For a democracy to be democracy, all citizens must have the right to vote. (In the case of minors, they must have these rights potentially, in their future.) This perspective is as old as Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics (Aristotle, 2010). For the political theorists of antiquity, democracy, though not the ideal form of government, presumed the political participation of all of its citizens. There are two obvious senses in which Greek ideal is inadequate for us today. Firstly, we know that the Platonic and Aristotelian concepts of citizenship excluded women and slaves, and even made the possession of slaves a necessary prerequisite to attainment of citizenship. The modern democratic ideal, by contrast, requires that citizenship be extended more broadly, and not be parceled out along lines of gender or racial or class origin. The modern argument with the ancient Greek theorists is less over the principle of democracy than over the principle of citizenship, and to whom it should apply. Secondly, Plato and Aristotle prescribed democracy only for societies that today would barely qualify for "village" status, and we know that such an ideal is impossible today for nearly all political entities (Plato, 2006).
In spite of their attachments to social hierarchies by modern democratic social theory, both Aristotle and Plato understood that democracy is incompatible with the institutional disenfranchisement of citizens. They did not assume, as many do today, that one earns the right to vote through good behavior. To the contrary, the citizen behaves well because he possess the right to vote, and can therefore be held to highest of standards. Life in a free society makes one a better person, not the other way around. The citizen's selfhood is realized within the polis, and most perfectly in the act of voting. One does not ask to be rewarded by the state for good behavior by being granted already inalienable rights. As indicated above, neither Plato nor Aristotle would have maintained that the values pertinent to the citizenry should be universally applied to every human being, but at least they articulated the basic principles of political life, and the motivation for responsible citizenship.
According to Gordon Marshall “the term political crime refers to conspiracy, and the actual deed of challenges to political rulers or sacred authority." Political criminals were likely to suffer much more gruesome punishment than ordinary or common criminals. Over time however, the meanings of the term and indeed attitudes toward political criminals themselves have undergone significant shift.
For example, politically motivated crimes to be redefined as offences against the state in Western Europe during the nineteenth century, and there were also debates about whether offenders such as the Suffragettes and the Fenians should be dealt with in the conventional criminal justice system because of their self-proclaimed political status. By the late twentieth century the political criminal had been transformed into the arch criminal or the terrorist who uses illegitimate violence against innocent citizens. However, human rights campaigners and some criminologists have also raised questions about the way in which the state itself can use its monopoly of force in a criminal way, in the pursuit of socio-political and military objectives. Some writers even argue that only states can be truly terrorist because they have the wholesale capacity to deploy terror as a systematic mode of domination and governance (Chomsky, 1988).
The strain theory explains Political Crime dealing with voting rights. The very definition of the word strain can be used to help understand strain theory. According to Webster's dictionary strain (in the form of a verb) means to be subjected to tension or stress; to cause a change of form or size in a body by application of external force. In the form of a noun, strain is known as a great or excessive effort or striving after some goal, object, or effect. Thus, it is rational to grasp how strain theory insinuates that social structures within society may ultimately pressure citizens to commit crime.
Strain theory is a sociological theory that tries to explain why people may be drawn to delinquency or crime. According to the theory, some crime may be linked to the presence of anger and frustration that is created by societal or personal strain. When a person cannot legitimately achieve the accepted goals of a society, he or she may turn to illicit means to create success.
Three of the fundamental goals that contribute to strain related crime are the pursuit of wealth, achievement of status and respect, and the need for autonomy. Societal myths help contribute to these strain including issues, such as the maximum that hard work always result in financial security. If a society is in the grip of financial crash or severe inflation crisis, even the hardest workers may lose their jobs or not be able to make ends meet. The failure to legitimately achieve a livable income, which is considered a fundamental goal in many regions, may lead to feelings of anger, bitterness, and frustration. If a person under such strain does not have means of relief or coping, he or she may turn to crime to achieve goals or obtain revenge.
The pursuit of status and respect are considered a primary reason why men turn to crime, according to strain theory. Traditional masculine hierarchy relies on the perception of a man as strong, heterosexual, and dominant. Some studies on strain theory suggest that men may attempt to gain status and respect through criminal actions, such as bullying, theft, or gang related activity. Again, the presence of resources for other means of success seem to play a large part in whether anger and frustration over social status turns into delinquency: people in lower economic brackets and those with already delinquent friends or family may be more likely to turn societal strain into criminal activity.
Most humans aim for autonomy: the ability to self-govern. The inability to control individuals destiny is often suggested as a factor in adolescent crime; kids that have no control over their lives or time may be more likely to feel victimized and become angry or rebellious as a result. Acts against authority, such as skipping curfew, refusing to do homework, or even engaging in sexual activity, may be attributed to the desire for autonomy that comes naturally with impending adulthood.
In the strain theory, one of the major determining factors in whether strain will lead to crime is how a person manages his or her anger. People driven to crime due to strain are believed to be more likely to blame problems on an external source and feel cheated out of entitlements. A perpetual notion that the world is unfair can quickly become justification for unfair or illegal actions. Additionally, the availability of alternatives to crime, such as education or gainful employment, seems to be very important to defeating strain related delinquency; the strain theory is often used as a basis for creating crime prevention programs in economically distressed or high crimes areas.