stencil wrote:
>
> On Wed, 1 Nov 2000 06:10:22 -0700,
> Spike Jones <spike66@ibm.net> wrote
> > [ ... ]someone offer to
> >write up a short extropian voters guide on the issues, along with your
> >reasoning? [ ... ]
> >I have a pretty good idea
> >how I will go: if it costs money, vote NO. If it increases the
> >government's already too great power, vote NO, etc. Would
> >gladly accept advice from like-minded peoples. Thanks! spike
> >------------------------------
>
> There's an interesting question (#2) on the Massachusetts
> ballot: should incarcerated convicted felons be denied
> the right (that they currently have and occasionallyexercise) to vote in Massachusetts general elections?
> The robot response is "Of course!," of course, on the
> principle that felons and children and lunatics and
> non-honestiores in general should be denied all rights, in
> case one ever should chance to exercise such a right in a
> felonious, childish, lunatic, or subdig way. But there
> are felons and there are felons, and lunatics and
> lunatics. Does scanning and printing currency invalidate
> your political judgement as much or more than scooping it
> out of the supermarket cashdrawer?
Felons who have been release from jail and served out their probation can, after
a certain amount of time, petition the court for 'relief of civil disability',
so your concern here is not neccessary, as there are mechanisms for certain
felons who wish to regain their right to vote and exercise other civil rights.
What the massachusetts bill is all about is giving democrats one more captive
block of disempowered people to get votes from (to join the elderly, disabled,
welfare dependents, etc). The reason they are pushing this is that the
Republican power in Massachusetts has been growing over the last decade, and
part of this is because so many criminals cannot now vote, and do not go through
the existing process to regain the ability to vote. What the democrats want to
be able to do is get their supporters appointed as wardens at prisons, who will
then deliver up an assured number of votes for democrat candidates that
republicans cannot touch.
> As an American gunowner I am subject to being declared a
> felon by fiat; as an Extropian sympathiser I feel often
> that I am developing and maintaining new memes and skills
> simply so that I can use them to commit crimes yet
> unnamed.
> Incarceration, after all, is just a redefinition of
> limits.
If that is your real concern, then don't worry. I expect if the democrats outlaw
them, you will quickly see Alaska and several western states secede from the
union. Don't know about New Hampshire, or Vermont, but I'm sure there would be
efforts made here. Don't think that the rest of the country is as dumb as the
people in Boston, New York, and DC.
The sad thing is that the democrats know they HAVE to use the lobster method.
They will take things nice and slow, as they always have, two steps forward, one
back.
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