Environmentalists joined the far-left campaign to give voting rights to incarcerated felons, arguing felon voting is crucial to fighting global warming.
“Until each and every one of them [have] their voting rights restored, the movement for climate justice — and every progressive cause — will be severely disadvantaged,” Sabelo Narasimhan, digital campaign manager for 350.org, wrote in an email to supporters sent Monday.
The group is now part of the effort, championed by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, to allow millions of incarcerated felons to vote. Currently, only Maine and Vermont allow imprisoned felons to vote.
350.org is a far-left environmental group founded by activist Bill McKibben, a staunch Sanders supporter who once called former President Barack Obama a “climate denier” for allowing an oil company to explore for Arctic oil.
“An assault on our democracy and the right to vote directly affects how we address the current climate crisis. When people can’t vote, fossil fuel billionaires win,” Narasimhan wrote in the email.
The email directs supporters to sign onto a letter to Congress, demanding felons be allowed to vote while incarcerated. The online letter is supported by 350.org and other groups, including Common Cause, the Hip Hop Caucus, Progress America and RootsAction.org.
Sanders is the main proponent of restoring voting rights to incarcerated felons among Democrats running for president in 2020. However, many other primary challengers aren’t sold on the idea.
Now, environmental activists want incarcerated felons to vote, and no longer be counted towards the population of where they’re imprisoned.
350.org’s support for felon voting, which is unrelated to climate change, mirrors environmentalists veering into other issues, like immigration.
Activists argue felon voting will somehow help “compel our elected officials to take real action on the climate crisis.”
“Under current laws, prisoners are counted as residents of the electoral district their prison is in— but they don’t get a vote,” 350.org’s Narasimhan wrote, arguing the current system “unfairly skews political representation towards rural white communities where prisons are often built.”
“It’s no surprise that elected officials and billionaires opposing bold action on climate are the same people upholding felony disenfranchisement and prison gerrymandering,” Narasimhan wrote.
“After all, those who are disproportionately affected by pollution and climate impacts are also disproportionately incarcerated: low-income people of color, especially Black people.”
The U.S. Census Bureau recently announced it would continue its long-standing practice of counting incarcerated individuals as part of the population where they’re imprisoned. Critics lambasted the decision, but officials pushed back.
Federal law going back to 1790 requires the government to base population counts on people’s “usual place of abode,” which the Census Bureau defines as the place “a person lives and sleeps most of the time.”
“Counting prisoners anywhere other than the facility would be less consistent with the concept of usual residence since the majority of people in prisons live and sleep most of the time at the prison,” the Bureau said in February in response to public comments.
Read more at Daily Caller
That is odd. On one hand, I don’t think it would be such a big deal if people in prisons in the US could vote, as well, as this is the case with prisoners in many European countries (there just seems to be a quantitative degree, there is far more crime and incarceration in the US than in most of the rest of the world). But the idea that prisoners care much more about climate change than the rest of the population and that voting rights for prisoners are therefore key for action against climate change is really odd.
I am struggling to understand how anti social criminals, in jail for harming society in some way, and for whatever reason, are supposed to become champions of the environment? In my experience they are the ones throwing sandwich boxes, dog ends, water bottles and drug paraphernalia out of their car windows on the Freeway between heists or scores. Call me old fashioned, but I don’t get this? This makes no sense on any level, as it also won’t make any difference, as explained by others above. We must give prisoners the vote to save the World? Not really. Even in the US, the World’s richest nation, who lock up more po’ people than any where else in the developed world. The ones that are not shot resisting arrest. Perhaps its that old time green delusion again?
The two comments above are missing the true reason they want the incarcerated to vote. They expect that these new voters would all vote Democrat which would allow their far- left agenda would be able to be passed. The tipoff is that he talked about those rural (read “ignorant rubes”) need ro be overruled by the vicious criminals in prisons in their communities.
I say put them all to work Building Bird Houses,Planting Trees Clean up a highway instead of making sucha bunch of pests of themselves
The article is wrong on one point, “350.org’s support for felon voting, which is unrelated to climate change, mirrors environmentalists veering into other issues, like immigration.” As Steve pointed out, the environmentalists support felons voting because they assume they will vote for their candidates. It is the same for immigration. In fact, the reason the Democratic Party so strongly supports immigration is they assume most immigrants will vote for them.
The assumption that felons would support climate change issues is probably correct. These people have made some very serious mistakes in their lives. We can expect continued mistakes in supporting the climate change movement.
This issue shows that the climate change movement is capable of learning. They have been losing elections. There were climate change ballot measures in the US 2018 election. There was Brazil, the Dutch election, Ontario, Alberta, and Australia. It doesn’t occur to the climate change movement the reason they are failing at the ballot box is their agenda doesn’t make sense and has excessive costs. Their solution is to change the electorate.
Voting in a democratic country is the eutimate expression of freedom and choice. If inmates are allowed to vote, there is simply no point in jailing them.