Should prisoners have the right to vote?

A political football gets booted back again.

New Zealand’s coalition government has announced it will reinstate a total ban on sentenced prisoners voting in elections.

This will reverse the previous government’s law-change which restored the franchise to prisoners serving sentences of less than three years, and which reversed a law change in 2010 that had removed the right to vote from all sentenced prisoners.

This is classic political football. Parties on left-field kick the ball towards recognition of prisoners’ rights; parties on right-field kick it back so far that no sentenced prisoner can vote.

The existing three-year sentence limit came from a feeble kick that only made it just past halfway. Over the longer term, the ball has gone as far as granting the franchise to all prisoners, then back to denying it to all.

The courts have declared that a blanket ban on prisoner voting is an unjustifiable limitation on rights under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The Waitangi Tribunal considers a complete ban to be inconsistent with te Tiriti, especially as it disproportionately affects Māori. An independent electoral review panel in 2023 recommended granting the right to vote to all prisoners.

Parliament can, if it wants, ignore those rebukes as it would wet bus tickets. The government can disenfranchise all sentenced prisoners with their majority, and they see political advantage in doing so.

In terms of vote-maximising, prisoners would be more inclined to vote leftwards, so the Left stand to benefit marginally by enfranchising prisoners. The Right see it the opposite way. The voting records in the House align with such political self-interest.

The numbers of potential votes aren’t huge, however. According to the Department of Corrections, there are 10,000 prisoners, but about 5,800 sentenced prisoners. Others are in remand, awaiting verdicts or sentences. Even if they all had the right to vote, their turnout rate would normally be relatively low. Sometimes just a few votes can make a difference, but on a hypothetical 50% turnout with 2900 sentenced prisoners casting ballots, that’s only about 0.1% of total votes. But, hey, the Leighton Baker Party got fewer than that in 2023!

Nonetheless, the right-wing government’s proposed ban gets applause from conservative voters, reinforced by accusations that Labour were “soft on crime” – even though letting prisoners vote could hardly have any effect on the rate of criminal offending.

Disenfranchising prisoners speaks more to the punitive instincts of many Kiwis, not to any reasoned, evidence-based arguments about crime rates or recidivism.

But politicians have to put a fig-leaf of principle over their nakedly political calculations. What, then, are the principled arguments for and against?

In favour of prisoners’ right to vote

A prison sentence is already a severe loss of rights: in particular one’s liberty and the freedom to associate with family and friends. It would be repugnant to our sense of justice to deny prisoners all rights entirely. For example, they must retain a right to necessities of life itself, such as food and hygiene. The denial of other particular rights may also be unjustified. Moreover, society has an interest in reintegration following release. Allowing prisoners the right to vote can maintain a sense of participation and responsibility while in custody, and hence assist with rehabilitation.

Against prisoners’ right to vote

A person who’s convicted of breaking the law – especially if serious enough to warrant time behind bars – shouldn’t be allowed to vote for those who make the law. A prisoner’s actions have put him or her “outside of society”, and so the right to participate in elections should be denied. As Minister of Justice Paul Goldsmith has put it, civic responsibility goes hand-in-hand with the right to participate in our democracy. He assured us that voting rights will be restored on release.

Where do you stand on this?

When prime minister Luxon was reminded by a reporter that the courts had declared such a ban to be inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act, he said: “I do not care what anyone else says about it.” But the courts are not just “anyone else”: they impose the prison sentences. I wonder if Luxon now regrets his momentary disrespect – or whether he’s taking tips from Trump.

The Luxon government’s proposed change would not be as strict, however, as those states in the US that impose permanent disenfranchisement for some people with criminal convictions.

AI-generated by Image Playground. The prompts were political football and voting in a modern penitentiary. It wouldn’t go with prison.