Felons Who Have Served Their Sentence Should be Given the Right to Vote

The issue of whether the felons who have already served their sentence should be granted the right to vote has been a heated debate for a long time. Actually, there are numerous pros and cons to this argument.

Some people opine the restriction that voting rights should depend on the severity of crime that the felon committed. Moreover, those who have a “for”-standpoint regarding granting voting rights to felons claim that, as the criminals paid their debt to the society and served their time, they should be allowed to vote. However, other people put forward an argument that there should be no exceptions and the formerly convicted felons should not be given permission to take part in the elections.

It must be said that there are numerous gaps in both sides. In particular, when claiming that the formerly convicted felons cannot be granted the right to vote, the opponents treat the former criminals as a lower class of people who should not have the same rights as the rest of the citizens. Besides, it should also be taken into account that not all countries implement the policy of preventing the convicted felons from taking part in the elections even when they are given much less time to serve when they are free.

The other side of the argument is quite clear: if a felon served the sentence and paid his/her debt to the society, then he/ she should be accepted back into the society. When a formerly convicted person returns to the normal state of living, he/ she does exactly the same things as the rest of the population, and therefore he/ she should also decide on what is going on in the government and the country as a whole. The supporters of this argument provide many examples why the former criminals should not be prevented from voting. One of such supporting arguments is the following: the criminals receive certain instructions and lessons on how to improve and modify their behavior. Such measures are part of their imprisonment. Therefore, in most cases, criminals will overlook their past misconduct and try to become better people. Furthermore, it happens that a convicted felon is not actually guilty of the crime he/ she is accused of. In some instances, one may become a victim of certain circumstances. So, it would be really unfair if a person got such a dark stain on his/ her reputation due to some unexpected turns of the events.