Teaser:‘We the People’ includes we the incarcerated

That the United States incarcerates people at a higher rate than most countries in the world is, by now, a truism.But that’s not the only way in which the country is an outlier. The vast majority of people locked up in prisons throughout America cannot vote. In many democratic nations, including Canada and most of the European Union, voting rights for incarcerated citizens are not revoked. Imprisonment itself is seen as sufficient punishment.The exclusion does not stop at the prison walls. There are over 2 million other Americans who have served their time but remain barred from voting because of a felony conviction.In total, 4.6 million people are locked out of the democratic process in the United States. Nearly half of them are Black and Latino. That’s a fundamental flaw in this experiment called democracy.Restoring our right to vote would make society safer. It would give incarcerated people a means of pushing back against a system that controls our lives. And it would help America realize a truer, more inclusive version of itself.People in this country have a long history of fearing the other. I wonder what people might fear about currently and formerly incarcerated people voting? Is it that...