first aff case

this is my current aff case, and its also the first one I've ever done. It's only a skeleton of a case at this point, but i would really like some advice on how to add to it. i have some ideas, but I'd like to see what other people think as well.

Aff Case

"injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." because I agree with Dr. Martin Luther King, I stand resolved that in in a democratic society, felons ought to retain the right to vote.

For clarity, I offer the following definitions:

democratic: pertaining to or of the nature of democracy or a democracy.

society: an organized group of persons associated together for religious, benevolent, cultural, scientific, political, patriotic, or other purposes.

felon: a person who has committed a felony.

ought: used to express propriety, appropriateness, etc.

retain: to continue to use, practice, etc.

right: that which is due to anyone by just claim, legal guarantees, moral principles, etc.

vote: to express or signify will or choice in a matter, as by casting a ballot

My value is freedom.
As I said earlier, a democratic society is defined as government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people. Therefore, freedom is the most important value in a democratic society because the if the people are free, then they will have the ability to exercise the power to choose the leaders and laws of the society. If the people's freedom is taken away, then the society will no longer be democratic because the people will no longer be in control. Also, people must have the freedom to choose who they are, live where they want, and say what they want. If people have these, then they will be significantly happier and more fulfilled than people in a more oppressive form of government, such as a dictatorship.

My criterion is tolerance.

Justice Oliver Wendell Jones called a free society a "marketplace of ideas". To ensure freedom, the government must not suppress any of the ideas and remain tolerant of them, thus ensuring freedom. Therefore, tolerance is my main criterion because if we do not accept others' right to express their ideas, their freedom is suppressed, and this can cause them to harbor resentment towards the government and possibly act out in violent means. Furthermore, Democracy, as a form of government, allows laws to be changed to fit the needs of the populace. No laws in a democracy are completely absolute. Furthermore, democracy values deliberation over certainty. Monarchs are certain; democrats know that their truths are practical and provisional rather than absolute. So, tolerance is a critical aspect of all of these things. We tolerate dissenting points-of-view because we are humble enough to know that ours might change in the flow of democracy.

My first contention is that to ensure freedom, democracy depends on leaders taking into account the interests of all citizens.

As Tom Christiano writes in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

"Strategically, democracy has an advantage because it forces decision-makers to take into account the interests, rights and opinions of most people in society. Since democracy gives some political power to each, more people are taken into account than under aristocracy or monarchy. The most forceful contemporary statement of this instrumental argument is provided by Amartya Sen, who argues, for example, that “no substantial famine has ever occurred in any independent country with a democratic form of government and a relatively free press” (Sen 1999, 152). The basis of this argument is that politicians in a multiparty democracy with free elections and a free press have incentives to respond to the expressions of needs of the poor."

If we deny a group of people their ability to participate in the democratic process, then politicians will not need to consider their needs. This will allow their concerns to go unnoticed, and they will not be able to correct problems in their part of society. The ability to recognize and remedy problems is an important part of our society. If we disenfranchise a certain group of people, then our society will be less capable to diagnose and correct problems within.

My second contention is that to ensure freedom, felons' voices must be included in the democratic process.

“Perhaps the most obvious consequence of felon disenfranchisement is that, if felons cannot vote, the political process may not adequately reflect their interests.” As a group, felons have a unique set of concerns, in particular relating to their ex-convict status.”- Stanford Criminal Justice Center.

If felons have a unique set of concerns, then we should include those concerns in the democratic process. looking back on Tom christianos quote from earlier, democracy has an advantage because it forces decision-makers to take into account the interests, rights and opinions of most people in society. If felons are denied the right to vote, then the decision-makers will not have to take into account the interests, rights and opinions of felons. Under these circumstances, not only can horrible things occur to them unchecked, but they have no way of changing their conditions.

My third contention is that democracies risk the temptation to disenfranchise dissenters, becoming intolerant and denying freedom.

Felons express often express dissent through their crimes. Knowing this, then if we disenfranchise felons, then this could lead to the conclusion that we should disenfranchise all dissenters. Felons are often dissenters, so if we disenfranchise some of them, then we are not far from disenfranchising all of them.


by the way, I'm probably going to update this as i go, so please check back and continue to comment.

Aff Case Rough Draft

Aff Case

I affirm Resolved: In a democratic society, felons ought to retain the right to vote.

For clarity, I offer the following definitions:
-Democratic: See democracy: government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.
-Society: a community, nation, or broad grouping of people having common traditions, institutions, and collective activities and interests
-Felon: Someone who has committed a felony
-Ought: Used to express duty or moral obligation
-Retain: To keep

My value for this round is Moral Pluralism (also known as value pluralism or ethical pluralism)
Societies, by definition, have common beliefs and institutions. When it comes to morality, some societies may use moral absolutism, the concept that actions are either moral or immoral regardless of circumstances. However a democratic society grants supreme power to the people equally, so the fundamental ideal of the society must be that one person's beliefs cannot be suppressed simply because they conflict with the beliefs of others, or else the society would cease to be democratic. This would appear to call for a philosophy of moral relativism, which states that no set of morals can be judged to be superior or "correct" because all morals are subjective. However, the problem with moral relativism is that it fails to draw a line for what can be allowed. There are some actions, such as unprovoked murder, that are almost universally condemned by a democratic society and interfere with the functioning of the society. Absolutism and relativism both go too far in opposite directions, leading to undemocratic societies. For a society to remain democratic, a middle ground is needed: moral pluralism, which states that morality is subjective and cannot be rationally evaluated, but also acknowledges that there are limits imposed on the differences which can be allowed.

The obvious problem with looking to moral pluralism as the supreme value of a democratic society is the question of where we should draw the line. At what point does something cross the threshold and become something that cannot be allowed, even under moral pluralism? To establish that line, we must look to a criterion of Mill's Harm Principle. In Chapter 1 of On Liberty, John Stuart Mills explains "that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." This is how we can draw the line for moral pluralism; as long as an action does not violate the liberty of another member of the society, that action cannot be restricted, because doing so would be applying an absolute moral standard. In the case of voting, denying the right to vote would only be acceptable if the action of voting would actually harm the liberty of other members of society. This is not the case; voting is about expression, and we currently deny the right to vote simply on the basis of what the felon in question has done. This is unacceptable under moral pluralism.

Contention 1: Felons cannot be disenfranchised due to immorality
In "Liberal and Republican Arguments Against the Disenfranchisement of Felons," found in the Winter 2005 edition of Criminal Justice Ethics, Jeffrey Reiman points our that one of the main reasons for disenfranchisement in the United States is "preserving the purity of the ballot box, that is, protecting the electoral process from morally unsuitable voters."
Reiman elaborates by citing an argument by Christopher Manfredi, who states that we are limiting "the political participation of individuals who have manifestly demonstrated that their character is predominantly self-regarding, present-oriented, and impulsive. In short, disenfranchisement is reasonable because criminal offenders are in general less empathetic and more impulsive than other citizens."
As Reiman points out, the assumption that all felons have immoral characteristics simply because many of them display them when committing crimes isn't a valid argument.
More importantly, disenfranchisement for these reasons represents a lack of tolerance, because a person who is less empathetic shouldn't be punished for that. If we refuse to tolerate a lack of empathy because it is immoral, we've reverted to moral absolutism and an undemocratic society.

Contention 2: Voting does not give a felon the opportunity to harm society
Voting is a way for an individual to express his or her opinion. Felons are imprisoned because they have committed crimes that are harmful to society, and so we are suppressing their freedom and being intolerant, but we are doing it to protect innocent people in society from them, and thus we are acting in the interests of the society. However, denying them the right to vote is no longer acting in the interests of society. Voting on issues and for candidates doesn't give felons the opportunity to cause harm to society. They are only given the right to vote on issues that everyone else could also vote for. Therefore the only justification for denying them the right to vote would be if they would vote for a candidate who would harm society, in which case under the Harm Principle all non-felons who would vote for that candidate should also be disenfranchised. The felon is already serving a separate sentence for their crimes, and the right to vote is not directly related to their crime, and the deprivation of it is not necessary for maintaining the democratic society. Therefore, in a democratic society, felons must retain the right to vote or else the government has become intolerant, leading to moral absolutism, which leads to an undemocratic society.

Contention 3: Denying felons the right to vote is a form of suppressing dissent
a) Felons represent a certain portion of society. They have all been imprisoned by society, and therefore may have knowledge or interests that other citizens lack. For example, an ordinary person might vote against any sort of resolution to increase funding to prisons, because they would consider it a waste of their own tax dollars. On the other hand, a felon who has experienced firsthand the poor living conditions of a prison would understand that such a measure is necessary to avoid mistreating felons. Society relies on the expression of opinions of all groups, and may end up mistreating certain groups, even felons, if they are not adequately represented. This would undermine the foundation of a democratic society by harming the liberty of felons and violating the Harm Principle.
b) Felons can often be primarily members of a particular minority or demographic. For example, in the United States, an average of 49% of felons are African-American. This means that African Americans have less representation in the electoral system. This could harm the interests of African-Americans in general because of the reduced voting power. So in the end, denying felons the franchise will do more harm than good.


Block: If felons' votes are capable of harming society, then logically Vermont should be a stinking hellhole. It is not, so granting felons the franchise does not automatically doom society.

some useful quotes about the limitations of democracy

Anthony Arblaster, Democracy [Second Edition], 1994, U. of Minn. Press, defines democracy as popular sovereignty.

[C]learly it cannot be a democratic act for the people to vote away their own power and their own rights.... For democracy to exist, power must remain with the people. If they freely abdicate that power, what they consent to may have popular support, but it is not democracy.... So, in effect, popular sovereignty must be inalienable. [p.88]

The assumption that there is a necessary connection between democracy and freedom is surely correct, even if we take some of the narrower definitions of democracy. For example, even if the essence of democracy is taken to be the process of choosing between elites competing to govern, the very business of choosing can hardly be confined to the visit to the polling booth.... Choice, however limited in scope, implies freedom...

If we adopt the more expansive definition of democracy... the case is even stronger. Democracy as popular power... should be seen as a continuous process of interaction between government and society, with a maximum involvement of the people in public decision-making at every level. [pp. 91-92]

[I]f we look to the people to play a more positive role, freely voicing their demands and hopes, their fears and grievances, as well as introducing ideas and initiating policies, plainly this can only happen in an atmosphere of the greatest freedom and openness, free from any taint of intimidatory anxiety or apprehension as to the possible consequences of speaking out. [p. 92]

Do we have reasonable grounds for excluding persons from the demos? Robert A. Dahl, Democracy, Liberty, and Equality, 1986, Norwegian Univ. Press, argues that we do (an argument that would ground a negative case).

Locke and Rousseau accepted, and Mill defended, the principle that a demos might properly exclude large numbers of adults who are subject to the laws made by the demos. Thus the attempt to ground "participatory democracy" on Mill and his predecessors is fatally flawed. Participation indeed. But only for the qualified! [p. 211]

Citizenship depends on contingent judgments, not categorical rights. And the contingent judgments need not lead to universal inclusion.... That we cannot get around the principle of competence in deciding on the inclusiveness of the demos is decisively demonstrated by the exclusion of children.... Children therefore furnish us with a clear violation of the principle that a government must rest on the consent of the governed, or that no one should be subject to a law not of one's own choosing, or subject to a law made by an association not of one's own choosing. [pp. 212-214]

[more to come]

Felon franchise neg second draft

Neg Case

I negate the resolution.

I accept my opponent's definitions (with the exception of:)
-Democratic: Adjective of the noun democracy, defined as: government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system

-Society: a highly structured system of human organization for large-scale community living that normally furnishes protection, continuity, security, and a national identity for its members

-Felon: a person who has committed a felony

-Ought: used to express propriety, appropriateness, etc

-Retain: to keep possession of
(this means that we are talking about felons who are currently serving time in prison, because denying the right to vote while in prison, even if it is restored upon release, violates the definition of retain)

My value for this round is Societal Welfare.
This is the paramount value when talking about a democratic society. In a democratic society, supreme power is in the end vested in the people, not a ruling class. So the welfare of those people, of society as a whole, is very important for ensuring that the society continues to function and remains democratic.

To ensure the welfare of society, we must look to a criterion of the Social Contract.
Under the social contract, members of a society give up certain rights in exchenge for protection of other rights. In a state of nature, there would be no guarenteed rights, because anyone would have the freedom to act as the choose on anyone else. The purpose of the social contract is to maintain the functionality if the society, and thereby ensure the protection of the basic rights of the ctizens. If the social contract is threatened, the safety of society as a whole becomes compromised. Therefore, in order to act in the interests of its citizens and thier welfare, a society must act in defense of its own social contract.


Contention 1: Disenfranchisement is justified on the part of the state

a) The function of voting is to decide laws, or to elect representatives who will create laws. Thus when a felon commits a crime, they have not only violated the social contract, but have broken the very laws that they helped to create. At this point, the state is justified in taking away their right to vote, because otherwise the felons would be helping to create laws that they have shown they will not follow. The best explanation of this in terms of the social contract would be Rawl's concept of duty of fair play. In Moral Problems: A Coursebook, Micheal Palmer explains that duty of fair play means that "if it is socially necessary that everyone behave in a certain way, then it is unfair to the rest if someone gains an advantage by acting otherwise." The rules of society are at the core of the social contract, and must be maintained for the contract, and by extension, the society, to continue to function. Allowing someone who would willingly violate those rules to help decide or alter the rules would be risking harm to the social contract, and thereby risking the rights of all of society.

b) The right to vote is not an inherent right, such as life or liberty. The right to vote is a state-given right, because without the state voting would not exist. As Jason Kuznicki, a political scientist at the Cato Institute, writes,

"Voting is a government-created right; you don’t have a right to vote in the state of nature. The social contract creates voting. By entering into society, you surrender a distinctly limited number of your natural rights, for instance the right to extract restitution forcibly from those who have wronged you. In compensation for giving these up, the state gives you some other rights (like voting, and trial by jury). All the other rights not clearly mentioned in the deal are yours to keep, at least in theory."

This means that because of the nature of the social contract, the state is fully justified in disenfranchising felons because they were given the franchise with the understanding that they would follow their own rules.

Contention 2: If given the franchise, felons would be capable of influencing our legal system in potentially harmful ways
a) Felons would automatically vote for a candidate who promised to release them, even if he candidate would potentially be harmful to society. If the candidate had insufficient respect for the social contract and the laws of the society, then many people would choose not to vote for him or her, ensuring that they don't get elected and harm the society. Felons, on the other hand, who have less respect for the law, would not feel the need to vote against the candidate. Also, felons could have a negative impact on initiatives on the ballot. Would we want a sex offender to be able to vote on an initiative to decrease the time sex offenders must spend in prison? Would they make a rational choice that would help society, or would they simply vote in their own self-interest?

b) Felons are capable of influencing election results. Often times, felons can be the swing vote. For example, consider the Washington State gubernatorial election in 2004. Christine Gregoire won the election by a margin of 133 votes. The republican party filed suit, claiming that many of the votes were cast illegally. In court, they provided evidence that well over 1000 votes had been illegally cast in Washington, many of which were cast by felons. The election results were not overturned because the republicans were unable to prove which way the felons voted. But the point stands that the number of felons can be greater than the margin of victory, thus making felons the swing vote.

the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Always useful in LD, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides for a much more universal standard of rights, than, say, the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. You can use rhetoric from the Declaration to argue that, as a whole, people in democratic societies agree that the values contained in it are good.

the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

This is an essential LD resource on a variety of philosophical topics. Check out, for example, the article on the justifications for democracy. Lots of great material for the affirmative.

Mr. A's sample "felon voting" Affirmative

Dr. Martin Luther King, while imprisoned in a Birmingham jail, famously wrote, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." It was a call to action, and the reason I affirm the resolution: In a democratic society, felons ought to retain the right to vote."

To clarify, I offer the following definitions. "A democratic society" is not any one particular society, but rather any society that possesses fundamentally democratic characteristics. These include--but are not limited to--political equality, universal adult suffrage, direct or representative elections, majority rule, and constitutionally protected rights.

"Ought" expresses not a practical "should" but a moral "must." The Random House Unabridged Dictionary's first two definitions capture this well:

1. (used to express duty or moral obligation): Every citizen ought to help.
2. (used to express justice, moral rightness, or the like): He ought to be punished. You ought to be ashamed.

A felon, according to Black's Law Dictionary, 8th edition, is a person convicted of a felony, which is "a serious crime usually punishable by imprisonment for more than one year or by death."

To "retain," according the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, is "to keep possession of." The right to vote is the right to cast a ballot in any election in one's area of residence, be it local, state, or national; synonyms include "the franchise" or "suffrage." To sum up: a felon in the affirmative world does not lose the franchise because of a conviction. In the negative world, felons lose the franchise for an unspecified time--even, potentially, for life.

Because the resolution centers on an "ought" claim and concerns citizens who have been convicted of a serious crime, and because democracy is a form of government that respects the moral equivalence of its citizens, we must consider as our primary value Justice, defined as the principle of "to each their due." In a democratic society criminals are due punishment for their crimes, but are also due fair treatment in a legal process that respects their rights. My thesis, essentially, is that we must reject felon disenfranchisement because it is unjust.

How do we clarify the demands of justice? Here we must consider a two-pronged approach, given context of the resolution. In a democratic society, punishment must serve a valid retributive purpose, and it must include safeguards to preserve rights. I'll explain each criterion in its own contention.

My first contention is that denying felons the franchise is irrelevant to the retributive purpose of punishment, and is therefore unjust.

As Richard Lippke writes in "Retributivism and Plea Bargaining," Criminal Justice Ethics, New York: Summer 2006,

[L]egal punishment is to be understood as an institutionalized form of censure for conduct that is morally blameworthy. Criminal offenders, on this account, have not simply acted in ways that are socially disapproved of or contrary to their own interests, but have acted in ways that are morally unjustified. Either they have invaded the moral rights of others or have threatened or attempted to do so, or they have violated legal rules the enforcement of which usefully coordinate complex interactions among citizens or allocate access to scarce resources in ways that are fair. Legal punishment censures offenders' conduct by imposing losses or deprivations on them proportional to the seriousness of their offenses.

The losses of liberty and property are sufficient and rationally connected to the kind of "invasions of moral rights" that offenders have perpetrated; disenfranchisement, by revoking a right unrelated to the nature of the offense, is therefore gratuitous.

Furthermore, the regulatory nature of disenfranchisement is completely divorced from any criminal justice purpose. In "Lock Them up and Throw away the Vote," found in the winter 2005 edition of the Chicago Journal of International Law, Robin Nunn creates a compelling argument to that effect. Ultimately, felon disenfranchisement is worthless, since it is imposed automatically, above and beyond the retributive purpose of criminal punishment. The process ensures the "invisible" nature of disenfranchisement. Nunn writes,

Since statutory law determines whether felon offenders retain their right to vote, criminal disenfranchisement is not imposed by order of a judge as part of a criminal sentence. It is a collateral consequence of conviction that occurs automatically and administratively.

It is the negative's burden to prove that disenfranchisement is not gratuitous. In the absence of such proof, the judge may automatically grant an affirmative victory.

My second contention is that denying felons the franchise destroys the safeguards in a democratic system, and is therefore unjust.

Crime, under any definition, is an offense against morality, with an important qualification: that morality is codified in law created by a democratic process. In other words, in a democracy, laws are not handed down by gods or kings, or derived by purely rational principles. They are hashed out in city councils and courtrooms and legislatures. Thus, it is entirely feasible for democracies to establish unjust laws. Consider Dr. King, cited above, who was imprisoned under obscure statutes for daring to dissent against, of all things, segregating "Jim Crow" laws--laws that, ironically, mirrored felon disenfranchisement statutes created for the same purpose, to deny power to African Americans. Their sad history is relayed in...

Better than anyone, King understood the importance of dissent against unjust laws.

To sum up: a democratic society must treat all citizens--including felons--justly. Since the practice of felon disenfranchisement not only has no retributive purpose, but destroys essential safeguards in a democratic system, it is unjust, and therefore we must affirm the resolution.

how to define the principles of democracy

If you're trying to figure out what the core value of a democratic society is, you might look to the U.S. State Department's analysis.

# Democracy is government in which power and civic responsibility are exercised by all citizens, directly or through their freely elected representatives.

# Democracy is a set of principles and practices that protect human freedom; it is the institutionalization of freedom.

# Democracy rests upon the principles of majority rule, coupled with individual and minority rights. All democracies, while respecting the will of the majority, zealously protect the fundamental rights of individuals and minority groups.

# Democracies guard against all-powerful central governments and decentralize government to regional and local levels, understanding that local government must be as accessible and responsive to the people as possible.

# Democracies understand that one of their prime functions is to protect such basic human rights as freedom of speech and religion; the right to equal protection under law; and the opportunity to organize and participate fully in the political, economic, and cultural life of society.

# Democracies conduct regular free and fair elections open to all citizens. Elections in a democracy cannot be facades that dictators or a single party hide behind, but authentic competitions for the support of the people.

# Democracy subjects governments to the rule of law and ensures that all citizens receive equal protection under the law and that their rights are protected by the legal system.

# Democracies are diverse, reflecting each nation's unique political, social, and cultural life. Democracies rest upon fundamental principles, not uniform practices.

# Citizens in a democracy not only have rights, they have the responsibility to participate in the political system that, in turn, protects their rights and freedoms.

# Democratic societies are committed to the values of tolerance, cooperation, and compromise. Democracies recognize that reaching consensus requires compromise and that it may not always be attainable. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, "intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit."

Which of these principles, if any, might be violated by denying felons the right to vote--or by allowing them to vote?

Potential Neg argument

The current resolution is: In a democratic society, felons ought to retain the right to vote.

For neg, the only thing I can think of so far is the social contract; felons didn't uphold their end, so the state doesn't have to uphold its own. However, when I was looking at Mr. Anderson's definitions of democracy, I noticed that most of them say that the people wield supreme power through elected officials or directly.

So here's my line of thought: Initiatives are either voted on by people, or by officials elected by people. So the "supreme power" of the people is basically wielded vicariously. For an individual, that supreme power would be represented by voting. So by allowing felons currently serving time to vote, you've given supreme power to someone whose actions indicate that they will act against the best interests of the society. Is that the kind of person we want to give supreme power to?

Does this sound like a reasonable argument? Or does it sound like basically a re-wording of the social contract argument?