Massachusetts state legislator Demetrius Atsalis has proposed that high risk sex offenders be prohibited from voting at polling places located in libraries and schools. As he explained, "if someone has to use a bathroom, there's an excuse to go down the hallway, and potentially, something can happen." What's the solution for these individuals? Vote absentee or don't vote at all.
I understand where this proposal is coming from. Sex offenders who attack children certainly do exist (although in smaller numbers than media accounts would suggest) and we have adopted a system where we attempt to intensively regulate the physical movement of these folks. They must register upon release, notify authorities about address changes, reside far from schools and churches, and stay out of areas popular among children. It only makes sense, then, that these complicated procedures be applied on election day as well.
So is there a problem with this bill? Maybe. In my view, many of these sex offender regulations are of minimal value. Registration may have utility insofar as it gives authorities a ready pool of locatable suspects; the existence of community notification, a recent study shows, may deter first time offenders. But I seriously doubt that geographical limits have much use at all. They're difficult to enforce and ignore the most likely community of victims: an offender's family and friends. So we need to weigh this very limited upside with the costs of this proposal. It significantly burdens an ex-offender's right to vote (controversial as this right may be) since many polling sites are in schools or libraries.
The benefits don't outweight the costs. The bill purports to offer safety, but would provide only the thinnest extra margin. A stronger argument, I suppose, might be that the provision - and the debate that surrounds it - provides a retributive payoff, allowing the community to express further outrage sexual offenders. But this is an utterly inappropriate justification for these sorts of collateral sanctions - civil disabilities, as they're often called - at least as long as courts do not subject them to critical review as forms of punishment. The real purpose of these laws, I've always thought, was to help legislators get re-elected. And in this regard, I expect, the proposal will be highly efficacious. The people who can show up to vote will presumably reward Atsalis for his hard work.
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