Making Offenders Vote: Democratic Expressivism and Compulsory Criminal Voting

Andrei Poama , Tom Theuns (1)

1 CERI - Centre de recherches internationales (Sciences Po, CNRS)

Is criminal disenfranchisement compatible with a democratic political order? This article considers this question in light of a recently developed view that criminal disenfranchisement is justified because it expresses our commitment to democratic values. We call this view expressive disenfranchisement and refer to the general conception in which it is grounded as democratic expressivism. Contra supporters of expressive disenfranchisement, we argue that democratic expressivism does not offer a sound justification of criminal disenfranchisement. Additionally, we argue that, insofar as one really cares about answering serious criminal wrongs via an expression of democratic values, criminal disenfranchisement should be abandoned and replaced with a policy that temporarily obliges the relevant criminals to vote. Democratic expressivists should, in other words, move from supporting the disenfranchisement of serious offenders to endorsing a policy of compulsory criminal voting for a finite period of time.

Keywords: criminal disenfranchisement; democratic political order; democratic values

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Political science

Andrei Poama, Tom Theuns. Making Offenders Vote: Democratic Expressivism and Compulsory Criminal Voting. American Political Science Review, 2019, ⟨10.1017/S0003055419000297⟩. ⟨hal-03567087⟩