On-topic but off-topic....

I'd like to remind folks that you need to be on your local electoral register in order to vote

Visit http://www.aboutmyvote.co.uk and click on "Register to Vote". You'll need an envelope and a stamp

This was a Public service announcement on behalf of the "You can't moan if you can't be bothered" party

Hmmm. I'm still failing to see why Voting is a Human Right. Yes, you have to be human to vote (although Switzerland looks like it might be moving towards changing that clickey ) but voting is a completely artificial construct that is already restricted to certain groups of humans. Specifically in the UK people over the age of 18 who aren't insane (sectioned under the mental health act) or, currently, criminals, foreign nationals who are transient in relation to the population of the UK and so on.
We already set boundaries for suitability to vote to the extent that people have to meet certain eligibility criteria. Granted the main one relies on the simple passage of time but we do, as a society, set restrictions on who can vote.
I do accept that restrictions on who can vote based on likely voting habits would represent a slippery slope into tyranny but equally we need to be mindful of groups we grant the vote to.
In the case of convicted criminals we have a group of people who have transgressed the law(s) of the state in which they live. As such they have more than likely impinged on the Human Rights of other people in the process (if you can think of a crime that doesn't impinge in some way on a human right then I'd be interested to know what it is).


If we wish to argue that having the vote is a Human Right then, as stated above, it can be cancelled out by conflict with another right. A criminal has, by their actions, normally transgressed one or more other peoples human rights. If convicted they loose the right to liberty in order to protect the rest of society from a recurrence of their actions. Loss of Liberty is a big right to loose but I would argue that also loosing the right to vote is also a reasonable way to protect society from the actions of criminals. Under most circumstances those rights are not lost permanently but can be regained by serving the debt to society required by the laws of the land.
A prisoner still has the right to self determination (insofar as they can choose how to act within the penal system and so shorten or lengthen their time within that system) and, as far as I'm aware, self expression (the majority of prisoners can read, write, learn, and be creative if they so choose and these activities may be actively encouraged as part of the rehabilitation process). There may be some limitations placed on those rights for the duration of the time it takes them to repay their debt to society but they haven't been removed totally.

True, if we opt to see electoral rights as a privilege then that is something that can rightfully be removed, along with the many others that are left behind as one exits decent society and enters into its dungeons. Or we could equally divide human rights into two categories, with the primary rights being life, liberty, property and other essentials; and secondary rights being things like privacy, or voting (let's consider these luxuries that happen to be of very high value). The first view is clearly very dangerous to the whole idea of rights, we assume that participation in the political process is our right, so to argue that it is no right at all is going to cause trouble. So I'll work on the assumption that everyone prefers the second view (although I still don't).

Either way, we appear to have an imbalance between British and European law here, in that the Euros are stricter about democratic representation as a right than the Brits are. The truth is that rights are fictional in every case anyway, so there is no definitive way to prove either case.

So instead I would argue that it is better for the institution of democracy itself, that we include every single person in the mandate, with only the absolutely essential exclusions. The purpose of democracy is to allow everyone who has a mind to have a say. Specifically, one mind one say. Where democracy fails is when that rule is broken in either direction. If a person is able to take advantage of others and cause their votes to come under his control, that is a serious abuse of the system. I believe this is the justification for children not voting - the are liable to vote as directed by their parents (possibly a dated argument) effectively giving dads more than one vote each.

But we should still consider why it is that the Euros think of this as a human right and we don't? Surely it is about something more than them being stinky and French and wanting to annoy us? I suggest that it is. Most of those countries have been through a lot more pain in the last two centuries to become democratic than we have. Perhaps they haven't forgotten what they stand to lose as quickly as we have. As members of a moral community, politics is important to all of us, even those members who have sinned and are in the dungeon remain members of that community (I will award 23 waffle points points to the whomsoever identifies the single factor that ensures admission). What gives that community moral authority though? Nobody chooses whether to be in it - you can't say "I don't want to be English any more" when they drag you before the court for theft. Nor can aspiring rapists say "I never asked to be born" and expect that to prevent them suffering consequences of their future misdeeds. We all surrender part of our autonomy even upon birth to become members of a community that chooses us without considering our intentions or desires.

The pay off for that loss of autonomy is representation, the fact that we get a say in declaring the laws by which we live and stand to be condemned. It might be a tiny say, one voice among millions, but it is your place in the scheme of things and mine too. I contend that this system is only legitimate in so far as nobody is deprived of their voice, and nobody is able to speak twice.

Prisoners must have a mind of their own; if they can choose to commit a crime, then they must have the general capacity to choose. They can surely have an opinion about who they want to represent them in parliament. And thanks to restrictions on privacy, I would suggest that electoral fraud should be easier to combat in prisons than anywhere else. So the crucial one man one vote test is passed with flying colours.

I think that we would be well advised to maximise the legitimacy of the system that creates the laws, even if we want to annoy the people who have broken them. This is because the practical aspects of removing the vote seem rather trivial. Not getting to vote is a punishment that few prisoners will notice, if you want to antagonise them for some reason, take chips off the menu, nobody can describe chips as a right, let them eat salad. (phone the fire brigade first though, unlike votes, prisoners care about chips and are liable to burn the place down). Sacrificing a principle, even if it seems minor, should never be taken so lightly that its effects can be unfavourably compared to small slivers of fried root vegetable.

It is equally valid therefore the argue that, as the UK has had a democratic system of some sort for a longer period than those European countries that have experience the pain of becoming democratic over that last 2 centuries. A case of youth versus experience one might say.


By that point, yes it is too late. However, you can say 'I don't want to be English' and emigrate to another country.



Electoral fraud may or may not be easier to combat in prison. The prisoners are, after all, under the control of the prison warden, the guards and any internal reign of terror that exists within the prisoner community itself. If the warden and guards or the most powerful group of prisoners are of a mind to coerce the rest of the inmates into making a particular choice what is there to stop them? I would hope that trhe warden/guards combination is unlikely. The second one is far less so.

I think that we are perhaps confusing Human Rights, i.e. rights derived from being a living human being, with Democratic Rights, i.e. rights granted to the citizens of a democratic state by law, statute and tradition. A democracy is only one possible way of organising and governing a community. It may be a highly desirable way to do so but it is not the only possible method. Further more, Democracy as we are discussing here is a largely western ideal that western nations are happy to foist onto the rest of the planet. How dare we have the temerity to tell other nations how to live and govern.

You can have a right to vote but that vote may be meaningless. IIRC there were elections in the USSR. There was a single choice on the ballot paper. Does that satisfy the inalieable right to vote? In Zimbabwe there were 'free' elections where voters could choose shichever candidate they wished (as long as it was Mr. Mugabe or they might part company with their legs or life).

Democracy and the vote is not a human right. It is one possible way to organise a community, a way that western nations have found to their liking over time. There are many possible ways to organise a participating democracy. They all have their flaws just like any other form of government so far devised by man.

The EU are seeking to impose their view of Democracy upon the UK because the majority of member states disagree with the way we 'do' democracy (and have done for longer than some countires have even esisted).

We must not lose sight of what sort of prisoner will get the right to vote. We're not talking about violent prisoners, but rather those in prison for "white collar" crimes, non-payment of tax etc.

If prisoners have the right to vote it is also another safeguard against the government locking away people who are politically inconvenient.

Democratic rights and human rights are not necessarily different. In both cases you are entitled to a certain right which others have a duty to respect, and your entitlement derives from existing as a member of a moral community. The difference then is one of direction: human rights are those rights that the individual is deemed to have need of in order to lead an acceptable existence. Democratic (political) rights are those that a society needs to provide for its members in order to have a fair system of government. I think that all rights which we consider human could equally be described as political and given a top down explanation instead of a bottom up one. Security of property for instance, is the right not to have your stuff taken from you without due cause and process. In a top down sense it is necessary for governments not to wantonly plunder their citizens (if tyranny is to be avoided).

The right to vote is not really the specific matter in question. Voting is the detail, the right applies to representation in general, however it is achieved. Your political right therefore is to have a say, equal to that of any of your peers, in the maintenance and formulation of the laws that govern you. Representative democracy in which a legislative assembly is made up of elected members regularly subject to re-election and held in check by some for of constitution is simply one convenient way of organising this, one which particularly suits the individual-centric nature of the west. In other societies which value harmony, some form of honour, or simply prefer a family unit to be the object of liberty rather than the individual, are liable to have a preference for some other means. They however are not the subjects of this argument because the philosophical bases of their political and ethical systems are too remote from ours for arguments here to apply correctly. Nevertheless, in loose general terms, they probably do have a system where a unit - not necessarily down to the level of an individual person - must have some right to representation for true valid government, and so single party states, monarchies, and theocracies that exist in some parts of the world are still ultimately doomed by some analogue of the rights we are discussing here.

What matters in our case is that we have created a political system based on a conception of rights that are largely approved of by most if not all, and this renders a duty for all persons (even those who dislike it) to respect that conception of rights. If we have chosen to curtail those rights for certain individuals, this must either be consistent with that conception, or else it represents a corrosion of it. Prisoners remain members of the moral community, otherwise their imprisonment is senseless. To remove them from the moral community would require some for of permanent exile, deportation, or execution; something, in other words, that would put them outside of the law altogether. If they are to remain inside the boundaries of our moral community, and continue thereby to remain subject to its laws, then the principle of representation continues to apply, and they should therefore have the same voting rights as anyone else.

Possibly true, but this is a contingent fact, such matters are not relevant to the underlying principles. If respecting the rights of a tiny minority is enough to devalue the entire edifice, then the correct response is not to withhold the minority's rights; we are required to overhaul the inadequate structure, which is a different matter entirely.

Taking it further still, we should start by clearly and dispassionately assessing what we really require of democracy - is it really preferable to be able to punish a small number of people we dislike than to ensure full and proper representation for all? The situation you describe is one where the ideal of democracy - one man, one vote, with every man and every vote to be of equal worth - is not being met. Swing voters in marginal seats probably should not be power-brokers.

And so, the members of the community who have chosen, by their actions, not to respect the conception of rights accepted by the majority should have exactly the same benefits and facilities as those who have respected the conception of rights? There is I think a significant difference between curtailing the rights of those who have chosen not to respect a societies concept of rights and curtailing the rights of those who have abided by the societies concept of rights.
There must be a penalty for breaking the law or concepts of rights of a society for members of that society who do so. Imprisonment is one such penalty (and it's a biggy) but so to is withholding the right to vote until such time as, by the laws of the society in question, the individual is deemed to have served their debt to society.

I suspect that we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one.

You are arguing that two wrongs make a right. And now you have forced me to make a bad pun. Hang your head in shame sir! Shame!



There would be if rights were a matter of individual choice. But you cannot pick and choose which rights belong to you, and neither can we pick and choose what rights belong to anyone else. All rights belong to all members of the moral community, even the immoral members. Otherwise they belong to nobody at all. In essence we abide by our own concept of rights by allowing prisoners to vote, and we trespass against them when we take that right from them.


But imprisonment serves a purpose other than punishment - the protection of society, this is how removal of rights to that end is justifiable. We also have a range of smaller rights infringements that we use for punishing those from whom we do not need protection. Fines are arguably an infringement of property rights, ASBOs and probation go against some principles of human rights, etc.

But the concept of rights is one that deserves to be taken seriously. Rights benefit society as a whole, and we should be as generous with them as we can possibly afford to be. Or seen from the other side, the more rights we take from a person, the less of a person they become. If withholding the right to vote was of clear benefit to wider society, if it served to protect us in some way, or was likely to help reform the offender, then I would be in favour of it. But it isn't like that. If prisoners had always been allowed to vote, that wouldn't be controversial. The only reason why this matter is a cause of controversy now, is that we have a mean spirited attitude towards prisoners. Sure, it's their fault that we don't like them, they do bad things that piss us all off. But rights are too important to be withheld for revenge, we need them to apply wherever it is possible, and should only suspend them where there is absolutely no option.



Probably true.