Ex-con's right to vote

Food for thought. There has been some talk recently on the subject "Should an ex-con be allowed to vote?" Bottom line for me is, I don't know. It is a bit of a conflict but, here's the way I see it.

Let's imagine for a moment you have a man, or woman, they make a mistake and they break the law, whether on purpose or by accident, and are sent to jail. (face it, all of us have a had a moment in our lives where we have made mistakes due to poor judgement).

The person serves their time and are released. Let's say for a moment that this is the only, and I mean EVER, illegal act this person does their whole life. other than this act, they work, pay their bills, pay their taxes, live a completely normal life. Should this person, whether they be black, white, yellow, brown or purple, be subjected to never being able to vote again?

When the Original 13 colonies used the phrase "No Taxation without representation" they may not have meant for this to apply today but it still holds meaning. Do we dare deny a person the right to vote, or any other rights for that matter, but yet, require them to pay taxes? Is this the road we truly need to follow?

This can begin the proverbial "slippery slope" to which there is no recovery. Americans like to say that we are the "Land of the free and the home of the brave" but if we start selectively choosing who can be represented, we can no longer hold meaning to this phrase and we show ourselves to be nothing more than petty thugs that only want what we want because, "I want it". (thoughts of the child in the toy store crying and screaming because mommy won't buy them a new toy.)

Make no mistake, I do believe that there are some that simply can not make themselves live in society without breaking the law. In fact, there are some that see it as a great way to get free room and board. There are no rose colored glasses on my face. I just think that there are far fewer of these people than those that can live within the law. How we treat them is what can make the difference in many of these cases. If we treat them like crooks, then it is highly possible that they will always be crooks. It is simple psychology. They does not mean that they are any less human than the rest of us.

We have a couple of options here. We can either allow ex-convicts to regain their constitutional rights once they have served their time, paid their debt to society, allowing them to rejoin society as a whole person, or we can deny them their constitutional rights forever, making them feel and look like a pariah on society. Perhaps we should bring back the scarlet letters or tattoo their prisoner numbers on them. Even better, once they have served their time, perhaps we can put them in "communities" so that they can live together and not have to intermingle with the general population. At least then we can ignore the fact that they exist so that we can go on living in our perfect world where no "undesirables" will infect us with their criminal existence.

We cannot, and never should, start thinking like this if we are to ever convince the rest of the world, and future historians, that we are truly the "Land of the free and the home of the brave". Freedom is the right of all men, women and children in this country. The bravery is allowing the fact that people can and will make mistakes but that they can also learn from those mistakes and redeem themselves.