02/04/2008 23:50

888 Voter Disenfranchisement? Look to Misdemeanor Sex Offenders

Because this post dares to defend some so-called "sex offenders," I need to make it clear that I thought up this scenario while trying to imagine the various ways that legitimate voters may be denied the right to vote in this year's elections. I am neither a sex offender nor a felon, and will have no problem voting. Tuesday, February 5th ("Super Tuesday") is the date of primary elections in my state, as well as several other states. My polling place is a church. This has been the case ever since I was old enough to vote, and was the case for many years before that. I have come to accept this as a matter of course; if I want to vote, I must go to a church to do so. It's always been a pleasant experience. I have never been proselytized at my polling place, and I've never flaunted my lack of religion upon anyone there, either. It's just about as close to neutral ground as you're going to find in the South. Everyone just wants to vote, and nobody in the South wants to keep anyone away from a church. The area churches have no shortage of volunteers for election day, so it works out very well. As an agnostic I've never really had a problem with the idea that I have to go to a church to vote. As Laurence Fishburne so eloquently digressed in the movie Hoodlum, "The good Lord and I have an arrangement, I don't go into his house, he doesn't come into mine." This evening I took a moment to verify my polling place. The districts here in the South are constantly being Gerrymandered, so anytime an important election is coming up, I like to confirm that what I see on my voter registration card jives, at least tangentially, with what the county Election Commission says is my local polling place. I'll be voting at the same location I always have. However, I noticed that the next district over is now voting at the local high school this year. Voting at a high school, that seems just as normal as voting at a church. Until you begin to consider the fact that while no one in society is ostracized and prohibited from going near a church, many thousands of men and women in this country may not legally approach a school. Individuals convicted of felonies typically lose their right to vote, their right to own a firearm, and a litany of other Constitutional rights supposedly surrendered by committing a felony. While I don't agree with this practice, these are the laws of the land. However, I got curious when I realized that several of my local polling places are public schools. A quick Google for "sex offender list" misdemeanor brings up any number of statutes whereby an individual can be convicted of a lesser, misdemeanor crime, but still wind up on the "sex offender list." These are individuals who have not been convicted of, or even charged with, a felony. They have not legally lost their right to vote. Yet in a growing number of states and municipalities, those who are on the registered "sex offender list" are forbidden from being within a certain geographically defined limit of a public school. So, I wonder. The guy who got caught taking a drunken leak in an alley, and who is now on the "sex offender registry" for that misdemeanor offense, and who has not legally lost his right to vote in elections because he has not been convicted of a felony, but who is legally forbidden from appearing within 1,000 feet of a school... What is this man to do when his assigned polling place turns out to be the local high school? See you at church tomorrow, I guess. VOTE