Word: vote
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...much do Americans value the right to vote? Pundits and politicians have not yet finished arguing whether the 38 percent turnout in this month's elections was good or bad, whether it showed a new trend of civic involvement or a gross apathy to political life. Perhaps, however, the true test of how much Americans value the right to vote is not how often we exercise it ourselves but how willing we are to deny it to others...
Twelve days before the polls opened, Human Rights Watch and The Sentencing Project announced that 3.9 million adults, including 1.4 million African-Americans, would be legally denied the right to vote Nov. 3. Their report, entitled "Losing the Vote," identified the last group of mentally competent adults to be denied the vote in the United States: those who have been convicted of a felony. Forty-six states and the District of Columbia have felony disenfranchisement laws which restrict offenders' voting rights. In 10 of these states, that disenfranchisement is permanent. A plea bargain for a first-time felony offense...
Most worrisome is the disproportionate impact of these laws on minorities: 13 percent of African American men were prohibiting from voting Nov. 3, and in Alabama and Florida, where ex-offenders lose the right to vote for life, one-third of black men are disenfranchised...
...were so many people deprived of voting rights? Apart from high crime rates, the reason is that felony disenfranchisement laws take away the vote for a wide variety of offenses. For an offender to lose the vote, the report states, "the crime need not have any connection to electoral processes, nor need it be classified as notably serious. Shoplifting or possession of a modest amount of marijuana could suffice...
...treatment of women has serious consequences. There has never been a female president of our country, and there probably will not be for a long time. This is not because people do not view women as intellectually equal to men, but because men tend not to vote for candidates they see as sex symbols. Would you want Barbie to lead your country...