8 replies to this topic

[Dredimus]

Quote

Barack Obama was not the only Democrat on the ballot on Tuesday in West Virginia’s Democratic Presidential Primary. Keith Judd — also known as Inmate No. 11593-051 at the Federal Correctional Institution in Texarkana, Texas — was running against him.

http://abcnews.go.co...cratic-primary/

[Skab1773]

No wonder it was close. One a criminal and locked up, the other a criminal and running a country.

[Socio]

Nearly fell out of my chair laughing when I read this, I think the good people of West Virgina are trying to send Obama a message, whether or not he gets it is another story.

[F3SS]

What's the bigger story here?
The fact that an unknown inmate serving time 2000 miles away in Texas actually got votes?
Actually gained 4/10 votes against an incumbent president?
The MSM reported it?

[Rafterman]

That's embarrasing.

[Sir Wearer of Hats]

I didn't think ex-cons could vote, or is that just one of those things that everyone believes but that isn't the truth?

[Michelle]

Wearer of Hats, on 10 May 2012 - 05:58 AM, said:

I didn't think ex-cons could vote, or is that just one of those things that everyone believes but that isn't the truth?

It's complicated...

Felony disenfranchisement — often a holdover from exclusionary Jim Crow-era laws like poll taxes and ballot box literacy tests — affects about 5.3 million former and current felons in the United States, according to voting rights groups. But voter registration and advocacy groups say that recent overhauls of these Reconstruction-era laws have loosened enough in some states to make it worth the time to lobby statehouses for more liberal voting restoration processes, and to try to track down former felons in indigent neighborhoods.

“You’re talking about incredible numbers of people out there who now may have had their right to vote restored and don’t even know it,” said Reggie Mitchell, a former voter-registration worker for People for the American Way. In Florida, “we’re talking tens of thousands of people,” he said. “And in the 2000 election, in the state of Florida, 300 people made the difference.”

http://www.nytimes.c...?pagewanted=all

[rashore]

Gagh... There should be some sort of rule about not being president if you've been in prison.. or yeesh, at least you can't be nominated while serving time. That's just beyond weird in my opinion.

[DoesntReallyLike]

I would gladly take the inmate. To have a President who gets paid to sit in a cell and do nothing would do less damage to America than for Obama to proactively follow his agenda for another four years.