Disenfranchising Democracy
Title | Disenfranchising Democracy PDF eBook |
Author | David A. Bateman |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Pages | 369 |
Release | 2018-10-25 |
Genre | History |
ISBN | 110847019X |
Disenfranchising Democracy examines the exclusions that accompany democratization and provides a theory of the expansion and restriction of voting rights.
Democracy and Disenfranchisement
Title | Democracy and Disenfranchisement PDF eBook |
Author | Kevin Lanning |
Publisher | John Wiley & Sons |
Pages | 263 |
Release | 2009-04-22 |
Genre | Social Science |
ISBN | 1444307347 |
Psychologists, political scientists, and experts in election law present a multidisciplinary perspective on voting. Personality characteristics such as motivation, values, and efficacy are considered, as are demographic variables such as education, age, and social class Examines the reciprocal relationship that exists in the functions of voting for individual and society: the interplay between persons and institutions gives rise to the perception that a government is or is not legitimate, and to the sense that an individual does, or does not, belong
Locked Out
Title | Locked Out PDF eBook |
Author | Jeff Manza |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Pages | 376 |
Release | 2008-04-17 |
Genre | Law |
ISBN | 0195341945 |
"Mr. Manza and Mr. Uggen... wade into one of the most contested empirical debates in political science: How many (if any) recent American elections would have gone differently if all former felons had been allowed to vote?"--The Chronicle of Higher Education. Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen, who understand the vastness of the jailers' reach, follow the story out of the cell and into the voting booth. Locked Out examines how the disenfranchisement of felons shapes American democracyhardly a hypothetical matter in an age of split electorates and hanging chads.... Exacting and fair, their work should persuade even those who come to the subject skeptically that an injustice is at hand.The New York Review of Books. 5.4 million Americans--1 in every 40 voting age adultsare denied the right to participate in democratic elections because of a past or current felony conviction. In several American states, 1 in 4 black men cannot vote due to a felony conviction. In a country that prides itself on universal suffrage, how did the United States come to deny a voice to such a large percentage of its citizenry? What are the consequences of large-scale disenfranchisement--for election outcomes, for the reintegration of former offenders back into their communities, and for public policy more generally? Locked Out exposes one of the most important, yet little known, threats to the health of American democracy today. It reveals the centrality of racial factors in the origins of these laws, and their impact on politics today. Marshalling the first real empirical evidence on the issue to make a case for reform, the authors' path-breaking analysis will inform all future policy and political debates on the laws governing the political rights of criminals.
America's Disenfranchised
Title | America's Disenfranchised PDF eBook |
Author | Desmond Meade |
Publisher | Cornell Selects |
Pages | 84 |
Release | 2021-11-15 |
Genre | |
ISBN | 9781501763748 |
Felony Disenfranchisement in America
Title | Felony Disenfranchisement in America PDF eBook |
Author | Katherine Irene Pettus |
Publisher | SUNY Press |
Pages | 298 |
Release | 2013-04-01 |
Genre | Political Science |
ISBN | 1438447205 |
State felony disenfranchisement laws that date back to Reconstruction fracture the American electorate into those who are citizens in the fullest sense of the term, in Aristotles words, and those who, deprived of political voice, still have the status of slaves. The existence of this "invisible constituency"approximately 5.8 million or 2.5% of the national voting populationwho live alongside the ruling enfranchised electorateis one of the scandals of our generation. In this second edition of Felony Disenfranchisement in America, Katherine Irene Pettus draws on philosophy, history, law, and punishment theory to make the compelling argument that state disenfranchisement policies have collective moral and political significance that transcends the personal tragedy of being legally deprived of full citizenship status. Pettus argues that the war on drugs, mass incarceration, and racially unbalanced disenfranchisement rates distort and disfigure the body politic as a whole, and undermine the legitimacy of the domestic and foreign policies promulgated by our elected representatives.
The Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons
Title | The Disenfranchisement of Ex-Felons PDF eBook |
Author | Elizabeth Hull |
Publisher | Temple University Press |
Pages | 232 |
Release | 2009-09-02 |
Genre | Law |
ISBN | 1439904413 |
A thought-provoking look at one population's loss of voting rights in the United States.
Foundering Democracy
Title | Foundering Democracy PDF eBook |
Author | Eric J. Miller |
Publisher | |
Pages | 25 |
Release | 2008 |
Genre | |
ISBN |
Felony disenfranchisement is best understood as a means of vote suppression. Quite apart from its significance as a form of criminal stigma, disenfranchisement is most properly characterized as one of the ways in which the American voting system reserves political participation for a privileged social and intellectual class. Thus understood, felony disenfranchisement reveals the theoretical underpinnings of an exclusionary version of American democracy in which more or less widespread disenfranchisement is an acceptable or necessary political tactic.Felony disenfranchisement should not be characterized as a sanction for criminal conduct: It fits none of the usual justifications for punishment. Most commentators agree that felony disenfranchisement as a collateral sanction for criminal conduct stigmatizes alike a disparate collection of individuals convicted of crimes carrying a penalty of one year or more - everything from drug possession to murder - and extends, in many instances, long after former felons have completed their sentences. Justifications for refusing the vote to felons, and to former felons who are no longer incarcerated, are surprisingly weak and clearly related to larger issues of democratic participation. Accordingly, it is under the framework of democratic participation that the most persuasive justifications of disenfranchisement might be found.Under the framework of democratic participation, the disenfranchisement debate implicates competing theories of democracy, each of which has profound consequences for the constitution of the American polity. I contend that there are currently three models for the right to vote in American society: (1) a membership model premised upon popular participation in the democratic process as an expression of citizenship; (2) a deliberative model in which popular participation is conditioned upon the duty to be an informed and reflective citizen; and (3) an elite model entrenching political office in a political class that competes for votes among the electoral masses. The continuing vitality of these three models at the level of political debate and constitutional doctrine unsettles the dominant history of the franchise as one of progress from an exclusionary to an inclusionary extension of the mandate, and requires us to acknowledge felony disenfranchisement as part of a larger process of voter exclusion and suppression.