Oregon state Democrats have advanced a bill that would allow people who are incarcerated in the state to vote. If enacted, the bill would make the state the third in the U.S. to allow people to cast a ballot while in prison or jail.
“Voting is just such an integral component to the way that we’ve built democracy,” Democratic state Sen. Sara Gelser Blouin, one of the bill’s chief sponsors, said in an interview. “People vote when they are in nursing homes, when they are in hospitals, people have the right to vote when they are receiving treatment for drug and alcohol abuse or mental health issues. We don’t condition the right to vote.
“Whether it’s murder in the first degree, second degree, criminal negligent homicide, assault in the first and second degree rape, trafficking of persons — all of these categories of felony convicts — we’re pretending that they will be good citizens who will be able to exercise their right to vote,” Republican state Sen. Dennis Linthicum said during a committee
“I don’t think that lack of voting is a deterrent to crime. I think that [voting] keeps people engaged in the community and helps people have more of a stake in the community moving forward,” she said. “I don’t see a nexus between your ballot and your prison sentence.”
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