One man's comments on everything


Sunday, January 30, 2011

To vote or not to vote : That is the question



A recent short discussion on the facebook forum " No beating about the bush club" about the rights of prisoners to vote made me think a bit. There are two answers to this : Yes allow it and no do not allow it. Both are just opinions. No one is right or wrong. No matter how you debate this there cannot be a right or wrong answer here.

My question about this is where do you draw the line about freedom of an individual. If you take the Americans for example : They are totally irrational with a lot of their ways of doing things. Just because they do not allow Prisoners to vote does not mean the rest of the world must follow ?

IF you argue for instance in favour of their right to vote will you allow this for all prisoners irrespective of why they are in jail ? If not where will you draw the line ? The guy that was caught speeding and could not pay the fine and ended up in jail – should he be allowed to vote ? Now we are getting to the very interesting part of all this : Why is monetary value the only thing that stands between him and his right to vote? So if I do not have money in this instance I am not allowed to vote ? How stupid can we get ?

The next question here is the right of anyone to vote. If I pay tax I have the right to vote. Period.

No argument. If I end up in jail (as in the above example) for a period of say 30 days over the voting period and I am still a taxpayer during that period why is my right to vote taken away from me? Can I now withold my money to the government because I did not have a say in electing them? Funny questions hey?

The purpose of this is just to make you think before you take sides on a matter like this !



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