Bernie Sanders Plan Would Allow 183K Murderers, 164K Rapists to Vote from Prison
By John Binder
Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) recent endorsement of giving voting rights to all American citizens who are currently in prison for local, state, and federal crimes would allow some 183,000 convicted murderers and 164,000 convicted rapists to vote from their jail cells.
In a CNN town hall this week, Sanders endorsed allowing all convicted U.S. citizens — regardless of their crime — to vote from prison.
“So, I believe people who commit crimes, they pay the price and they get out of jail, they certainly should have the right to vote,” Sanders said. “But, I believe even if they are in jail, they’re paying the price to society, but that should not take away their inherent American right to participate in our democracy.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), also running for the Democrat nomination for president, hinted that she would be open to such a plan, saying “I think we should have that conversation” when asked about allowing convicted criminals to vote from their cells.
The latest data compiled by the Prison Policy Initiative concludes that there are more than 1.6 million convicted criminals in local, state, and federal prisons across the country. This includes about 183,000 convicted murderers and 164,000 convicted rapists.
Not all 1.6 million convicted criminals in local, state, and federal custody are American citizens, though. State and local prisons have yet to collect data deciphering between the citizen versus noncitizen populations of their prison populations.
Federal data concludes that noncitizens make up about 25 percent of the federal prison population.
Should this be true of local and state prisons, as well, this would mean that about 1.2 million convicted criminals in prison today could be eligible to vote from their cells under Sanders’ plan — including anywhere between 137,000 and 183,000 convicted murderers and potentially between 123,000 to 164,000 convicted rapists.
Similarly, the Sanders plan would potentially allow anywhere between 14,250 and 19,000 citizens convicted of manslaughter to vote from their cells, as well as up to 154,000 convicted assailants.
Ahead of the 2020 presidential election, as Breitbart News has reported, organizations funded by billionaire George Soros are working to restore the voting rights of about 1.4 million felons in Florida after the state approved the measure last year.
Senior Sri Lankan officials ‘withheld intel on terrorist attacks’
The head of Sri Lanka’s parliament has made damning accusations against senior officials in the government, alleging that they withheld intelligence about impending attacks on churches, hotels and politicians.
A series of Easter Sunday bombings at Sri Lankan churches andhotels killed at least 359 people. Authorities have made dozens of arrests in the aftermath.
“Some top intelligence officials hid the intelligence information purposefully. Information was there, but the top brass security officials did not take appropriate actions,” Lakshman Kiriella, leader of the parliament, said Wednesday
Kiriella claims that Sri Lankan authorities received a warning from Indian intelligence about possible attacks on April 4, and that this information was shared at a Security Council meeting, chaired by President Maithripala Sirisena, on April 7 but was not shared further.
“Somebody is controlling these top intelligence officials,” Kiriella added. “The Security Council is doing politics. We need to investigate into this.”
Meanwhile, former army chief and Minister of Regional Development Sarath Fonseka told parliament that he believed the attacks had been planned for some seven or eight years.
ALSO ON RT.COMTerrorists needed ‘at least 7-8 years’ to plan Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka
A confidential April 11 security memo contained names, addresses, phone numbers and movement patterns of the attackers from the National Thowheeth Jama’ath group suspected of carrying out the spate of attacks. Sri Lankan authorities also knew as far back as January that the group was stockpiling weapons and detonators.
Government minister Rauff Hakeem described it as a “colossal failure on the part of the intelligence services,” as in-fighting between Sri Lanka’s president and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe appears to have prevented effective action being taken to avert the danger.
“If the names of the persons involved were already known, why were they not arrested?” he added.
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