Giving Prisoners the right to vote

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prisoner-vote

Prisoners should be allowed to vote: High Court
The Government has indicated it will not change its mind on a broad-sweeping ban on prisoners’ voting despite a High Court ruling it was an unjustified limitation on the right to vote.

The High Court issued a “declaration of inconsistency” today after considering a complaint from five prisoners who argued the extension of the ban on prisoners voting to cover all prisoners sentenced to imprisonment infringed the right to vote in the Bill of Rights Act.

A spokesman for Justice Minister Amy Adams said the government was still considering the judgement the court made, but said Parliament had considered the Bill of Rights implications when it passed the law in 2010.

While we are scrambling to explain to a consumer culture generation why democracy isn’t one giant scam aimed at empowering those who have vested interests, how about some focus on the manufactured constraints that disenfranchise from the outset?

The poor, the under educated, the young, migrant and Maori vote are the ones missing in the decision making process so if universal suffrage is to mean anything, the structural barriers built into the system must be removed to grant those excluded to gain voice.

Many living in poverty are weary of Government agencies and debt collectors and so don’t want to enrol and have their contact details traceable. Voters can choose to be on the unpublished roll but the process is difficult and should be streamlined with the tick of a box and publicised as an option.

If universal suffrage is to mean anything, it must be extended to everyone. A prisoner is still a citizen and as such have rights which should be unalienable regardless of incarceration, the right to vote should be one of them. National in its first term passed a petty nasty pointless raw meat policy to deny prisoners serving sentences of less than 3 years from the right to vote. *

If we honestly believe that our electoral system should strive to provide the most democratic outcomes by encouraging even those disenfranchised by the system to engage in it, then the system has to make the effort to remove the structural blocks to that participation.

Allowing prisoners to be beaten, raped and abused while removing their ability to vote to change that system is a terrible indictment on how easily led our petty vengeance is.

 

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*updated thanks to GE in comments

10 COMMENTS

  1. Shows how desperate this party of deviants, liars, leeches, and losers is. Time they realise, decent people want neither the party nor their Gutless Little leader.

      • Why don’t you use your native name. Scared it may expose you?

        [Mortense, I’ve no idea what that jibe refers to. But I note the hypocrisy of you demanding someone use their “native name” while you hide behind a pseudonym. Hiding behind anonymity is cowardice. To address your concerns, from now on you will be allowed to post here only under your real name. No more pseudonyms for you. – ScarletMod]

  2. Indeed, Martyn.

    Removing the right to vote is simply another shove given to the underbelly on Aotearoa, pushing them further away from social inclusion.

    I can’t see how removing the right to vote could be called rehabilitation and inclusion.

    It smacks of petty vengeance and catering to National’s ill-informed, mono-syllabic redneck rump.

    • But prisoners are already socially excluded. That’s the one of the points of sending them to prison – to socially exclude them from society until they’ve done their sentence. And if you don’t think prisoners should be socially excluded why have prisons at all? Given modern day technology people who commit crimes can still be punished and society still be protected without sending those people to prison.

  3. That is EXACTLY what it is Frank (and Martyn).

    Petty vengeance.

    So when we get back out of gaol what do YOU think the first thing we are going to do might be?

    Rehabilitation? Yeah right.

    Whom can I hurt in response to being treated like an untermensch…

    You reap back what you sow.

  4. Prisoners lose their right to vote when they lose their freedom. Once their out then they can vote again. That said, people should go to prison *as* punishment, not *for* punishment. Not only is this more humane and doesn’t bow down to society’s need for revenge, it also produces far better outcomes.

  5. 1000% Martyn & Frank,

    We are all human in the eyes of god and hopefully the courts and judiciary.

    If you treat people less than human we will reap those seeds we sowed, so treat them with some respect as members of our human family and we will all benefit but shonkey doesn’t know how to treat others as equal does he?

  6. National in its first term passed a petty nasty pointless raw meat policy to deny all prisoners, including those on remand…

    The law change does not deny remand prisoners the vote, the along with some other small groups of prisoners, are able to vote.

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