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That's a weak argument. 1) You'd have to imprison millions of people to make a difference in most elections. 2) If you actually have the power to imprison so
by bufferoverflow 6y ago
That's a weak argument.
1) You'd have to imprison millions of people to make a difference in most elections.
2) If you actually have the power to imprison so many people without consequences, you don't need to do it for the election's sake. Just fake the election results. Works for Putin, Lukashenko, and other dictators. Gulags are a pain to manage, especially in the modern world where information spreads like wildfire.
- benlumen 6y agoI should have articulated it better - i don’t mean literally rounding people up to sway an election. I think it might be something that happens gradually over time with a softer, more subtle effect than that. Say, tougher enforcement in some areas than others. And how about what’s made illegal in the first place? Could there be an incentive to pass laws that criminalize activity that the other side is more likely to engage in? (See: the war on drugs) It’s probably naive to think that there are no political consequences at all.
- opencl 6y agoThe US has millions of people incarcerated and a few million more who can't vote because they were formerly incarcerated.
- bufferoverflow 6y agoThe US has millions of people incarcerated for crimes, not political dissidents.
- saagarjha 6y agoA substantial majority have not been convicted of a crime and there is of course certain groups that tend to be incarcerated at higher rates.
- Qwertious 6y agoWe're not talking about jailing dissidents though, we're talking about jailing demographics that tend to vote for the opposition.
- bhickey 6y agoYou don't need to be a dissident to be politically disfavored. "Sarah Shannon and colleagues estimate that one-third of black men had a felony conviction in 2010—a significant increase over the past 30 years and far above the rate for white men." [0] As one Watergate conspirator revealed in an interview, this was the purpose of the war on drugs: "by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities." [1] [0] https://www.sentencingproject.org/news/5593/ https://www.sentencingproject.org/news/5593/ [1] https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/ https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
- ykevinator 6y agoThe sentence for those crimes is prison, the loss of voting is just an arbitrary bonus that is "the way we've always done things."