At the CNN Democratic 2020 presidential town hall this week, an audience member asked presidential candidates whether people should be allowed to vote while in prison. Doubling down on who these potential voters might be, she emphasized the Boston Marathon bomber and people convicted of sexual assault as examples.

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said yes, a nod to his state where incarcerated people already vote. And South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg, who for some odd reason is the third leading contender, said no.

As a movement lawyer dedicated to building a world free from prisons and police, I often navigate, as many abolitionists do, this question about my work: “What about the murderers and rapists?” My answer is that to create a radically inclusive social democracy in the United States, everyone must have the option to vote, including people who are sitting in cages, on parole or probation and in detention centers.

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Last year, organizations like Dream Defenders and the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition canvassed to successfully pass Amendment Four, re-enfranchising people with felony convictions. This was a huge win for 1 million people, but excluded those with sexual assault or murder convictions. Unfortunately, thousands of Floridians are saddled with criminal legal debt, fines and fees to pay before they can re-exercise their right to vote. Paying financial or societal debt is an uphill battle for the most vulnerable groups. A former client of mine was homeless and making minimum wage at a fast-food restaurant. We fought against her probation officer’s attempt to deny her successful completion of the terms of her release because she could not afford the expensive group therapy class fees, despite having perfect attendance and participation, and giving more than half of her check each pay period to therapy. If she lived in Florida, she would not be allowed to vote.

Here is one problem with waiting for people in prison or on probation like my former client to “finish paying their debt to society”: usually the darkest and poorest people pay. Consider this paradox. Americans celebrate a constitution drafted by men who sanctioned or participated in murdering and raping black and indigenous people, while simultaneously disallowing people convicted of murder and rape the option to vote in the name of that document. Without paying any debt to society to atone for their crimes against humanity, these founding fathers are commemorated in currency, monuments and schools. People convicted of murder and sexual assault are denied resources, housing and educational opportunities, and in some states, they are killed.

It's time to let US prisoners vote. Democrats should take a stand | Matt Bruenig Read more

Thus, Buttigieg is not actually concerned about reducing underlying harm or protecting victims, but denying voting rights to people because they are locked up. He could allow Emmett Till’s murderers to vote because they were found “not guilty”, but not black men falsely accused, yet convicted of raping white women during the Jim Crow era. This logic permits hundreds of police officers who have committed murder and sexual assault to vote because they are rarely convicted of those crimes. The supreme court justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh have not been charged with sexual assault, despite credible allegations, and they can vote and decide the law. And even after bragging about sexually assaulting women, the sitting president can vote, but Marissa Alexander couldn’t at one point. She was imprisoned for defending herself against partner violence. Voter disenfranchisement based on incarceration is as arbitrary as the criminal legal system itself.

When repeating the audience member’s question, Anderson Cooper added a word that makes many cringe: pedophile. Pedophilia is a psychiatric disorder where adults are attracted to young children. It is daunting, and as a mother of two young children, I pray for their safety from anyone who could harm them. But Cooper used “pedophile” interchangeably with “people in prison”. There are people with pedophilia in prison, and there are people with pedophilia who never touched a child. But when the term is misused as a categorical class of criminals, it discourages people from seeking help who need it, potentially making children less safe. People suffering pedophilia need counseling, accountability, medication or psychiatric care.

But there are also people who abuse children due to this society’s patriarchal insistence of sexually desiring youthfulness; because they can access and harm them without any accountability, and for their personal gain. Thomas Jefferson probably falls into this category with other slave owners who forced black people of all ages to reproduce. He may or may not have been a pedophile, but he enslaved and sexually assaulted Sally Hemmings from the time she was a teenager into adulthood. Despite this founding father’s acts, Jefferson’s memorial statue sits in a concrete rotunda in DC, which has an incarceration rate twice as high as the nation’s, and where people in prison cannot vote.

We should be honest and recognize that America already has a record and practice of allowing people who have acted violently to vote

This is not to suggest that we should further restrict voting rights or disenfranchise people who have been accused of harmful acts and not convicted, or even a call for them to go to prison. Rather, we should be honest and recognize that America already has a record and practice of allowing people who have acted violently to vote, and even run this country, especially powerful white men. Furthermore, with the rates of unreported sexual assault so high, and mostly committed by family members and acquaintances, surely many of them are already voting.

Instead of pretending that “rapists” and “murderers” are new, strange categories, we must interrogate why America is producing so many people who harm others, and address the underlying causes. The people who do not want murderers and rapists to vote should join others like Common Justice and Survived & Punished in learning how to reduce murder and sexual violence. We are at a critical moment where we must think more radically and imaginatively about how to end incarceration. Part of that requires including people who have committed harm. Cages are not a viable option for this transformational journey, and neither does denying anyone any right to access the polls.