Should prisoners be allowed to vote?

[minestrone]

I that you should have to pay tax to vote.

I don't pay green fees for the local golf course so why should I get a say in the next club captain.

[xoggoth]

It's a bad precedent. What if the insane are allowed to vote? Labour might get in for ever.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

I that you should have to pay tax to vote.
.

How much tax do I need to pay to get a vote - is VAT Ok or do you mean income tax? Do you get a number of votes in proportion to how much tax you pay? Would Sir Philip Green and Lord Ashcroft be denied the vote? (or are they OK since they are Tories?)

I don't pay green fees for the local golf course so why should I get a say in the next club captain.

Not really a valid comparison is it, but then you can't have been offering it as a serious comparison surely?


As for prisoners - I have voted WGAF - as someone else pointed out, the ripper et al had the vote before they got caught, and it's not as if there is any political party standing on a criminal friendly manifesto.

[scooterscot]

They can have my vote, I don't use it anyway...

[AtW]

So what if they get to vote?

What matters is that those who go to jail ain't got no entertainment center, no climate control, no video system, no surveillance, no freezers, no ******* ice cream, no rubbers, no women, no guns. All they should get there is *tulip*!

[CheeseSlice]

So what if they get to vote?

What matters is that those who go to jail ain't got no entertainment center, no climate control, no video system, no surveillance, no freezers, no ******* ice cream, no rubbers, no women, no guns. All they should get there is *tulip*!

Agree with the second bit.
Prison currently sounds like another form of 'living on benefits' but without the freedom.
What I'm wondering is if some people out there may actually prefer prison to the benefit cap system on 'the outside'.

[MarillionFan]

sent daaarn, for serious criminal activity. like 4 week porridge or more


p.s. dont be , we all spent a night in a cell. well most of us

What EO says.

If convicted you lose all you're rights innit.

Loads of people have spent a night in the cell. Which reminds me, EO, next time you get arrested can you piss in the toilet in the corner and not on the floor, makes an awful pong for the next person!

[RichardCranium]

If convicted you lose all your rights innit.

That doesn't really work. They are still covered by Health & Safety, the right to protection from assault, the right to be kept warm, dry and fed. Essentially, all that is removed is the right to wander freely around the country.

Loads of people have spent a night in the cell.

Oh dear. First day in the new gig not go well? Have they just let you out? You didn't hit your new boss, did you?

[Mich the Tester]

So what if they get to vote?

What matters is that those who go to jail ain't got no entertainment center, no climate control, no video system, no surveillance, no freezers, no ******* ice cream, no rubbers, no women, no guns. All they should get there is *tulip*!

AIDS

Do you really want prisons to be a breeding place for STDs?

I think that would do society even more harm than whatever offences the criminals have committed.

[Ignis Fatuus]

There is a very important principle here, which I am surprised that nobody has mentioned amid the detail of the argument. That is the question of who is sovereign: the government or the people. I believe that in a democracy the people are sovereign, however much the constitutional history of England may have produced the doctrine that government (acting theoretically for the monarch) is sovereign. I hold with the writers of the US Declaration of Independence that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.

Voting is a superior power to governing. The vote is not a privilege given to people by government. Rather, government is a privilege and a duty given by the voters.

It is the Vote that legitimises Government, not the other way round. For this reason I believe that it is wrong for government to take upon itself the power to remove the vote.