I’m a conservative. I don’t mind the liberal stuff here. It’s good to learn the other side, but I don’t want a liberal echo chamber. I’d like to be more politically balanced in the fediverse. Is there any way I can do that?

  • Whirlybird
    1·
    1 year ago

    In Florida, courts have backed Republican efforts to withhold voting rights from hundreds of thousands of felons, many of them people of color.

    Maybe it’s just me but I’m ok with convicted felons not being able to vote.

    Registering to vote using and then presenting a federally issued government ID is a good thing. It stops voter fraud dead in its tracks. Why are people against this? Because it supposedly disadvantages minorities? It doesn’t. They can get a federally issued ID just as easily as anyone else.

    • Very_Bad_Janet@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      Felony disenfranchisement is a relic of the Jim Crow era. It’s an incentive to arrest and convict POC on false charges of a felony so that their rights are permanently stripped away. Restoring the right to vote lessens this incentive.

      https://www.vox.com/voting-rights/21440014/prisoner-felon-voting-rights-2020-election

      If you’re interested in learning more, please check out this book:

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow

      Re voter ID laws, this is from the ACLU’s fact sheet on voter IDs:

      -Minority voters disproportionately lack ID. Nationally, up to 25% of African-American citizens of voting age lack government-issued photo ID, compared to only 8% of whites.
      -States exclude forms of ID in a discriminatory manner. Texas allows concealed weapons permits for voting, but does not accept student ID cards. Until its voter ID law was struck down, North Carolina prohibited public assistance IDs and state employee ID cards, which are disproportionately held by Black voters. And until recently, Wisconsin permitted active duty military ID cards, but prohibited Veterans Affairs ID cards for voting.
      -Voter ID laws are enforced in a discriminatory manner. A Caltech/MIT study found that minority voters are more frequently questioned about ID than are white voters.
      -Voter ID laws reduce turnout among minority voters. Several studies, including a 2014 GAO study, have found that photo ID laws have a particularly depressive effect on turnout among racial minorities and other vulnerable groups, worsening the participation gap