One of our listeners contacted us to comment on our recent podcast, Toad to the White House, where we discussed, among other things, why both current convicts and former convicts have limited or nonexistent voting rights. It was correctly noted that we omitted a key point in that discussion — the fact that our justice system disproportionately and unfairly prosecutes people of color (documented by innumerable studies on the subject) makes the restriction on prisoners’ (and ex-prisoners’) voting rights a de facto form of race-based discrimination around voting as well. We should have delved deeper into that point in our discussion.
Reflections on the intersection of economics, history, politics, psychology and science