Sides with black felons and rules that Washington State’s convicted felons, including those in prison, should be allowed to vote.
I tell you what — If it weren’t for that nutty appellate circuit, there wouldn’t be much of a need for the Supreme Court.
WA’s law is like MO’s — convicted felons can vote as long as they’re both out of prison and off probation. WA recently made it easier for felons to vote — Before, felons could vote only if they were both out of the joint and off probation, and weren’t in arrears on fines or restitution. (There’s the problem with so many black ex-cons — They can’t stay out of trouble long enough to get off probation, at least until they’re old men.) Yet, that wasn’t enough for six black prison inmates, and a three-judge panel of the 9th Circus. Previously, the Federal district judge in Spokane ruled for the state.
The attorneys for the felons contend that any prohibition against felons voting has the disparate impact of weakening black political clout, b/c the justice system is biased against minorities. What they mean is that blacks misbehave more often. The truth of the matter is that the justice system is biased toward minorities, b/c a combination of Federal and state civil rights laws, precedence and black jury nullification works in the favor of black defendants at every stage of criminal charge disposition proceedings. Even before the formal trial process, blacks tend to live in either heavily black or white liberal political jurisdictions, where a lot of black crime is ignored or unsolvable, and there are a lot of black cops who sympathize with black crime, or handcuffed white cops who live in fear of civil rights prosecution. If the CJ system were genuinely fair, then many more blacks would be in prison, and be ineligible to vote. That it is biased in favor of them actually helps to enhance their political clout.
If the ruling survives SCOTUS, I don’t think that it’ll mean that a lot of imprisoned felons will vote. I do think that it’ll make it easier to commit voter fraud, because names on the rolls, even if the corporeal humans behind those names don’t vote, allow corrupt poll workers to stuff boxes with fake votes, and to check off that a registered person “voted,” without raising suspicion.
However, it wouldn’t much affect the American body politic at the outset. Washington State is as blue as can be in terms of Presidential politics, and I would imagine that most of WA’s prison inmates come from solidly blue Congressional districts. What I mean by that is that even though the prisons are in the middle of nowhere, the inmate lived in the ghetto section of Seattle at the time he was shipped off to prison, so that will be his “official residence” for voting. (Thinking out loud here about a dilemma, hypothetical to MO. What if a young man who lives on College and Carter on the North Side of St. Louis gets sent off to Jefferson City for a life term for murder, and gets to vote thanks to the Federal Judiciary. And the people, presumably his mother and siblings, occupying his last residence pre-prison move to South St. Louis City. Does this mean that his “residence” will change to a part of the city he’ll never see or live in, and vote there in the 3rd Congressional District, i.e. Russ Carnahan, compared to his previous 1st, i.e. Lazy Clay? Or will he “reside” in Jefferson City and vote in what is now Ike Skelton’s district?) Though WA does have a Republican AG, and he’s defending the state in these proceedings. (A Republican statewide office holder in WA State? I know, stranger things have happened.) But it might swing the outcome of an election like WA had in 2004 for Governor, where Christine Gregoire needed every vote she got (and every vote she didn’t get, IMHO) to win.
[...] think this edict will domino to another matter, and that is, the question of imprisoned felons and voting. The big issue there is the same: Where does a guest of the state “live” in terms [...]