GOP Makes Government Larger, More Intrusive, and Costlier, While Being MORE Unresponsive to Citizens

I personally have found that whenever I look at conservative proposals that they label "common sense solutions" what that is code for is a proposal that benefits some segment of their donors, not their base; that those solutions either grossly ignore facts or are so superficial in their analysis as to be utterly unaware of the facts of the problem, or what they define as the problem.  In short, while their common sense solutions might make good sound bytes, they stink, they lack merit, they are frequently intellectually dishonest and lack any factual basis or justification.  Invariably, instead of being cost-effective or cost-reducing, they cost more money - usually in the form of an unfunded mandate that shifts the burden to someone else, unfairly and without their consent.

One recent example has been the Voter ID legislation vetoed by Governor Dayton.

There is zero evidence of voter fraud being a significant problem in Minnesota; it has never changed the outcome of an election despite this being a vigorously held urban myth on the right.  They can produce no evidence; they simply BELIEVE that it exists, on faith.  Their legislation would cost an estimated $23 million dollars, which would have to be paid for at the local level, while all of the county election officials agree that this will impede the efficiency of elections without producing any demonstrable benefit.  The county and local entities that have to pay for this don't have a say in having to fund this.  The Right provides ZERO financial support for this stupidity.

Governor Dayton wisely vetoed the legislation for a solid assortment of reasons.  Instead, in an attempt to show that he was going to be tough on this non-existent voter fraud, as a concession to this paranoia on the right, Dayton issued this executive order.  This will clearly cost far less than the GOP legislation, be far more effective in providing counties and other local government the tools they need to check for felon voters, and it doesn't disenfranchise anyone in the process, as the GOP legislation would do.

But a better question to ask. is it time to stop barring our felons from voting? We need to be asking what benefits do we receive from this aspect of penalizing crime and what benefits or harm might there be from discontinuing to do so?  The United States has the largest population of people incarcerated in the world, more even than China or Russia.  Approximately 70% of them are non-white.  The population behind bars has QUADRUPLED since the Reagan era.  This graph, courtesy of Wikipedia's article Incarceration in the United States, provides a handy quick reference to how we compare to comparable countries.  We are not just jailing a little more of our population, we are jailling a LOT more of our population:

The stats source is the World Prison Population List. 8th edition. Prisoners per 100,000 population

When disenfranchising felons was customary in our earlier history, there were far far fewer people affected on a percentage / per capita basis, and far far fewer crimes were felonies.  As this has changed, overwhelmingly those who are affected have disproportionately been black or other minorities, turning disenfranchisement of felons effectively Jim Crow laws.  While this suits Republican ideology and preferences, it is contrary to the notion of one man one vote on which representative government in this country was founded.


What was not known at the time that we disenfranchised felons that we know now was that there were benefits to felons voting.  Studies show that when felons vote, legally, after their convictions and sentences have been served, they are far less likely to reoffend.  Recidivism is a huge problem in this country; again from the wikipedia article, (because I'm hoping readers will inform themselves further, and it is a good place to start) from the same incarceration article, quoting the Bueau of Justice statistics:

"A 2002 study survey showed that among nearly 275,000 prisoners released in 1994, 67.5% were rearrested within 3 years, and 51.8% were back in prison.^"

We have locked up so many people, while simultaneoulsy disenfranchising them that we have so changed the voter base as to alter the outcome of elections.

Along with our growth in the population behind bars has been the growth of the very high cost of keeping them there, again from wikipedia, in hopes that readers will look further than this post:

By removing the barrier to felons voting, we would be acting to be more fair, but more importantly, we would be acting to reduce the number of former crminals who continue to offend, who make a revolving door of our prison system, to our cost.  When former felons legally vote, they become more involved as participants in our communities, they invest themselves in those communities, they begin to care in ways they did not previously in the success and safety and well being of those communities  instead of victimizing them.

It does not obviously reform all criminals, but it does statistically make a significant difference, at no financial cost to government.  The reason this does not appeal to Republicans, whether they admit it or not, is that there is some evidence that reformed felons tend to vote Democratic more often than they vote Republican, so that this would not benefit them in elections the way disenfranchising voters would.  If the Republicans have to persuade a larger electorate of the wisdom and desirability of their policies, they tend to lose.

Governor Dayton did the right thing in vetoing the Voter ID bill, but I'm sure it will be back, courtesy of the Republicans, in subsequent legislative session.  His executive order was a much better alternative, that addressed an actual existing problem, not a conservative fantasy.  But far better for Governor Dayton would be to address removing the prohibition of felons from voting entirely, which would be an even larger savings on current expenditures, make our government smaller and less intrusive, and far more cost effective, and more fair in terms of enfranchising the largest possible electorate.  To do that would make our government more genuinely representative, and would more closely reflect the premise of one person, one vote.

To do so would be following the trend of other states in this country, and of other countries world wide, a step forward, not the step backwards that the GOP and Tea Party would have us take to a worse time, to a fantasy world in their ideology that has never existed.  Other states currently allow felons to vote while behind bars, notably Vermont and Main, others have made it possible for felons to vote while on parole or probation.

Lets make it simple. Lets allow felons to vote if they want to do so; any felons.  The potential benefit is fewer crimes, fewer criminals, more voters, less cost, and less intrusive government butting into people's private lives.  It is a start to lowering that population behind bars which should be an embarrassment to Americans, which clearly costs us money we could better spend elsewhere.  We are not the land of the free with so many people anything but free.  We are no model of democracy when we deny so many people the vote, needlessly.

Governor Dayton, Democrats in the legislature, make this your counterproposal to the Voter ID legislation.  Save us money, make government smaller and less intrusive. Make us more free by making more people free to vote.  Heaven knows the Republicans won't; they've proven that for decades.