@ Forax
Uhh...you aren't really questioning anything there. That's the way it is, so don't break the rules, eh?
Do you know where the harshest rules against felons are? The South. Do you know when they were enacted? Reconstruction. The laws about what constitutes a felony and what constitutes a misdemeanor have been repeatedly beefed up in these states to target a certain demographics.
There are attitudes and biases couched in our laws, you can't just take that shit for rote. These Southern voting laws have stood for over a century; the rest of the country has stipulations that allow felons to vote when on parole or probation, or according to what exactly their felony is. What a coincidence that the South, the stronghold of a certain political party and ideology, does not. Just follow the rules and you'll be fine.
I was almost convicted of a felony myself, only to have all charges dropped. I don't know what would have happened had I not been able to afford a real lawyer, as I initially had a court-appointed lawyer who was a drunk who told me to go to court on the wrong date. The justice system is fucked and I know it first hand.
There is hardcore racist shit going on in New Orleans post-Katrina. It's couched in seemingly innocuous building and housing codes. There is nothing shocking about the language of the laws, but in practice they are highly discriminatory. For instance - there's loads of new codes outlawing "multi-family housing" in what were majority Black & Latino areas of the city; targeting multi-family housing is a way to target statistically low-income people is a way to target minorities. It's not a coincidence and neither are our voting laws.
Personally, I think there should be different requirements to attain your right to vote -- a literacy test for one.
