Voter Crimes
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
Is there another democracy on earth working as hard as mine to make it illegal to vote?
For me, this is not an idle question. I really want to know. For anyone living outside the United States, in a democracy that actually means it, do you have a law that could put you in jail for making it easier for your neighbors to vote?
We’ve got plenty of them now pending or enacted in the United States, and plenty more on the way.
In Pennsylvania, help someone who can’t walk or drive get their ballot to the dropbox? You go to jail.
In Georgia, give old Cicely Tyson a bottle of water ‘cause she’s waitin’ in line to vote and can’t quite make it to the fountain? You go to jail.
In Wisconsin and Iowa, send a ballot to someone who didn’t ask for it? You go to jail.
In Montana, mail your ballot and, because she’s busy making the real money for the family, mail your wife’s too as a small favor? Jail.
Texas sent a woman to prison for five years because she tried to vote and didn’t know she was ineligible. How is that proportionate sentencing in a state that elected Ted Cruz, twice?
Tennessee tried to make it a crime if you forgot to fill in some line on your voter registration application.
Once you go to jail, we’ve got plenty more states making sure you don’t go to the ballot box again anytime soon. Kentucky and Virginia make you a lifetime civic pariah: you never get to vote again. More than five million Americans can’t vote because of felony convictions. If every one of them had voted for their favorite criminal in 2020, we’d have a different Presi…no, that guy still would’ve lost by a couple million votes. Does it make sense that people who commit crimes shouldn’t be able to vote? Many of the people they would be able to vote for (like the big loser just mentioned) go to elected office with the specific intention to commit crimes, or commit them along the way.
My little sister reminded me the other day of something our distant Uncle Sam once remarked about some of the folks who make these laws:
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
Maybe we should look to other democracies that actually encourage voting.
Another family member, my son-in-law, reminded me the other, other day — I need a lot of reminding lately — that Brazil has a law we might want to consider way up here. There, and in maybe thirty other countries, it is illegal NOT to vote.