The bizarre, if unsurprising, suggestions made by Bernie Sanders and Kamala Harris that incarcerated felons should be given the right to elect judges and prosecutors as well as other public officials reached its stunning conclusion today at the hands of the chief of staff of freshman Congresswoman and clueless goof Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez…or Cortez for short.

While Sanders sees forbidding prisoners to vote as a slippery slope that we’ve been on since 1787, AOC’s idiot chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, takes the idiocy lot further.

What's the reason NOT to let incarcerated people vote? Shouldn't the people most affected by unjust laws have some say in electing people to change them?

— Saikat Chakrabarti (@saikatc) April 24, 2019

You know who else is in prison? People put there by just laws because they were criminals. Unless you are only going to let the wrongfully convicted vote, this argument makes no sense. Then, of course, you’d have to answer to why you were keeping people imprisoned by unjust laws.

Andrew Follett, of Club for Growth, objected:

Also, voting is a privilege, not a right.

— Andrew Follett (@AndrewCFollett) April 24, 2019

He’s correct. While it is referred to as a right, it clearly isn’t. For instance, you can’t exercise the right just anywhere, only in your home precinct. Foreigners have recognized Constitutional rights but they can’t vote. And so on. A discussion ensued, little of it intelligent (this was Twitter, after all), and then Chakrabarti re-entered with more idiocy.

This is the interpretation of the constitution that an analyst at the Club for Growth, a conservative advocacy org, has. This is the kind of thinking that leads to the laws causing mass voter disenfranchisement. It's also wrong, both morally, and technically. https://t.co/RpUtiKj1Q4

— Saikat Chakrabarti (@saikatc) April 24, 2019

The Constitution names the right to vote five times. It talks about not infringing on the right, just like the right to bear arms: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

— Saikat Chakrabarti (@saikatc) April 24, 2019

This is a cross between sophistry and lunacy. One of those instance of voting being called a “right,” in the 14th Amendment:

But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

The Amendment clearly contemplates criminal activity resulting in the inability to vote.

If voting was anywhere comparable to the Second Amendment, the logical conclusion would be that felons could not only possess firearms, they could do so while in prison.

This guy is an idiot. The only saving grace is that he may get a chance to experience the impact of one of the unjust laws he’s ragging on about:

Chakrabarti has been weighed down by scandals since entering the public spotlight with Ocasio-Cortez.

He has been accused of funneling over $1 million in political donations to his own private companies. And Ocasio-Cortez and Chakrabarti also “obtained majority control of Justice Democrats PAC in December 2017, according to archived copies of the group’s website, and the two appear to retain their control of the group,” according to The Daily Caller.

On the positive side of the ledger, AOC has been anointed as the thought leader of the House Democrats, and if this clown is doing her thinking, I feel pretty confident about the future.

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