Starting this semester the University of Massachusetts made it much easier to be a senior and take as few classes for as many much-needed credits as possible by increasing general education classes from three credits to four. Ultimately, and I am not at all ashamed to admit this to you, the students, faculty  and the lonely guy who found The Collegian’s website because of that “Katy Perry is well endowed” article, that’s the only publically admissible reason I’m taking Poli Sci 101.           

The class is about American politics – the Constitution, elections and that kind of stuff – and it’s taught by Professor Ray La Raja, whom I’m sure you all know by reputation, if not by name, as “That professor whose wife knows Lady Gaga.” Having mentioned Gaga and Perry, all I need to do is say, oh, Rihanna, and this article will show up in some pretty strange Google searches.           

Just the other day Professor La Raja was lecturing about voting rights, specifically, how in the entire country, only my noble, enlightened, just and magnanimous homeland of Vermont and its pal Maine allowed felons to vote. You barbarians here in Massachusetts don’t allow felon voting and in two states utterly bereft of the gift of Vermont civilization, Kentucky and Virginia, convicted felons can be deprived of their voting rights for life.           

Now I don’t know why Vermont permits felon voting myself, but I do know that the arguments for felon disenfranchisement – “They already had their chance to participate in society” and so forth – make about as much sense as milking your prized cow with cold hands in the morning.           

See, voting is one of the most important technologies we have. Instead of say, writing detailed memoranda on why holding Congressional hearings on the Bowl Championship Series is a waste of taxpayer money, or staging an intervention because your local Republican office-holder’s obsession with renaming things after Ronald Reagan has begun to include family members, parts of his body and even English words and letters, we can take every issue of the past session of Congress or the legislature, research the issue, come to a well thought-out conclusion on the performance of our representative and fulfill our civic duty by voting for the candidate with your favorite of two letters next to their name (“D” and “Ronald Reagan”). The great circle of politics continues: the politicians go on theoretically being held accountable for their actions by elections and we go on theoretically voting for them.           

So it’s not like voting allows us to participate in society in the first place. More important than that, though, is that in our American form of government our forefathers had the foresight to foreclose on this issue before it was relevant: it’s called the 14th Amendment. It’s the one that guarantees equal protection of the laws to all American citizens and is probably the most powerful of the amendments in terms of how the Supreme Court uses it to work huge changes in American life.           

People become felons by being convicted in a court of law, or, if none are available, a royal court at one of those medieval dinner theaters will do. They are convicted by a jury of their peers, which at one time meant people from the same class as the accused, but now means 12 random schlubs from the court’s jurisdiction. The jury makes its decision based on the evidence presented by witnesses or gathered by police and explained by lawyers.           

The laws the felons are convicted of breaking were written and codified by a highly trained group of unelected legislative aids who then read short summaries of the proposed laws to the legislators, who really wanted to be involved in the writing process but were too busy thinking up ways to support public higher education in speeches without actually giving it any money. The legislators do vote on the proposed law, though, making it their responsibility.           

If felons cannot vote than they have no way to hold the people who put them behind bars accountable, meaning they lack equal protection of the laws. They might win an appeal in court, but to actually tell elected officials that a law is unjust in a language they understand is almost impossible, because prison guards are very good at making sure visiting dignitaries don’t get poo thrown at them. In our system of Checks, Balances and Overdrafts, felon disenfranchisement is important for another reason: it is unjust. Since they cannot hold the authors of the laws accountable and “governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed,” than the interaction of consent and accountability – voting – becomes moot.           

Put simply: in order for the criminal justice system to function justly the criminals must have the ability to give their consent to the system. With felon voting, California’s “Three-strikes-and-you’re-out-because-we’re-too-stupid-to-come-up-with-a-rational-and-humane-justice-system-so-we’re-going-to-base-ours-on-a-game” system, where being convicted of three felonies brings guaranteed life imprisonment, would not have been allowed.           

Based on the above line of reasoning, it becomes clear that someone who does not vote cannot be sent to prison, because they have not yet given their consent to the system. Since they still retain the right to vote, as citizens, I’ll make things even more air-tight and say people who have renounced participation in politics forever can’t be sent to prison.           

Consent: it does a body politic good.

Matthew M. Robare is a Collegian columnist. He can be reached at [email protected].