{"id":261,"date":"2008-11-05T11:46:55","date_gmt":"2008-11-05T11:46:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/felons-cant-voteunless-they-ar.html"},"modified":"2008-11-05T11:46:55","modified_gmt":"2008-11-05T11:46:55","slug":"felons-cant-voteunless-they-ar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/felons-cant-voteunless-they-ar.html","title":{"rendered":"Felons Can’t Vote…Unless they are IN the Senate?!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

(cross-posted on faithfuldemocrats.com<\/font><\/a>)<\/p>\n

<\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

<\/font> <\/p>\n

Wow, what a night.  <\/span>I know everyone is going to be writing about Obama and the incredible races and probably has more energy and insight than I at this moment.  <\/span>But something struck me about the Alaska Senate race last night that seemed odd, and I haven’t heard it addressed.  <\/span><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

I don’t have a lot of commentary, but here’s my realization.  <\/span>Stevens couldn’t vote for himself for Senate because he is a felon, but he will be able to vote IN the Senate as a felon.  <\/span>Something is amiss when we say people are not qualified to choose their elected representatives because they are felons but are qualified to BE those elected representatives AS felons.  <\/span><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

Something to ponder…<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

I’ve got to say that the results also speak to the expectations Alaskans have for their representatives in government that they would elect someone to represent them who will be serving what could very well amount to a life sentence in jail.  <\/span>Senators must be physically present to have their votes counted.  <\/span>So they just chose to have one of their two Senate votes not count for the next six years (assuming Stevens serves-out\/lives-out his term).<\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

Oh well.  <\/span>I think it is worth thinking about the larger question about who we allow to vote (in the election and our governing bodies).  <\/span>But mostly now is a time to look to the future and start planning how Democrats are going to deal with the mess we have inherited.  <\/span>I pray we have the sense to realize this was much less a mandate for us than a referendum against Bush and the politics of pandering to one’s base instead of speaking to the broader needs of the people.  <\/span>We need to get to the business of real governing and moving legislation that has broad appeal.  <\/span><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

If anyone can bring this country together though, it’ll be Obama.  <\/span>Time to pray extra hard for our leaders!!<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(cross-posted on faithfuldemocrats.com)   Wow, what a night.  I know everyone is going to be writing about Obama and the incredible races and probably has more energy and insight than I at this moment.  But something struck me about the Alaska Senate race last night that seemed odd, and I haven’t heard it addressed.   …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":167,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,1,13,9,3],"tags":[281,278,279,4,152,277,5,280,276],"class_list":["post-261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christians","category-election-08","category-evangelicals","category-religion-in-the-public-square","category-u-s-constitution","tag-alaska","tag-bribery","tag-conviction","tag-election","tag-eleison-group","tag-felon-vote","tag-obama","tag-sen-stevens","tag-ted-stevens"],"yoast_head":"\nFelons Can't Vote...Unless they are IN the Senate?! - Progressive Revival<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/felons-cant-voteunless-they-ar.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Felons Can't Vote...Unless they are IN the Senate?! - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(cross-posted on faithfuldemocrats.com)   Wow, what a night.  I know everyone is going to be writing about Obama and the incredible races and probably has more energy and insight than I at this moment.  But something struck me about the Alaska Senate race last night that seemed odd, and I haven’t heard it addressed.   …\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/felons-cant-voteunless-they-ar.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-11-05T11:46:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Eric Sapp\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Felons Can't Vote...Unless they are IN the Senate?! - Progressive Revival","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/felons-cant-voteunless-they-ar.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Felons Can't Vote...Unless they are IN the Senate?! - Progressive Revival","og_description":"(cross-posted on faithfuldemocrats.com)   Wow, what a night.  I know everyone is going to be writing about Obama and the incredible races and probably has more energy and insight than I at this moment.  But something struck me about the Alaska Senate race last night that seemed odd, and I haven’t heard it addressed.   …","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/felons-cant-voteunless-they-ar.html","og_site_name":"Progressive Revival","article_published_time":"2008-11-05T11:46:55+00:00","author":"Eric Sapp","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/felons-cant-voteunless-they-ar.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/felons-cant-voteunless-they-ar.html","name":"Felons Can't Vote...Unless they are IN the Senate?! - Progressive Revival","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-11-05T11:46:55+00:00","dateModified":"2008-11-05T11:46:55+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/29ba652b85566beedbe83d5ce1a393c1"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/felons-cant-voteunless-they-ar.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/felons-cant-voteunless-they-ar.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/11\/felons-cant-voteunless-they-ar.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Felons Can’t Vote…Unless they are IN the Senate?!"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/","name":"Progressive Revival","description":"Politics from the New Religious Progressives","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/29ba652b85566beedbe83d5ce1a393c1","name":"Eric Sapp","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/b63\/b633169ad1640973736abe8b60e1b980x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/b63\/b633169ad1640973736abe8b60e1b980x96.jpg","caption":"Eric Sapp"},"description":"Eric Sapp, a native of Durham, NC, was Senior Partner at Common Good Strategies (CGS) prior to founding The Eleison Group. CGS received significant national attention following the \u00e2\u20ac\u212206 cycle for its groundbreaking faith outreach and messaging work for the DSCC, Senators Casey and Brown, Governors Strickland, Granholm, and Sebelius, Rep. Shuler, and the Michigan, Kansas, and Oregon State Democratic Parties. CGS clients significantly out-performed Democrats nationally (normally by double-digits) with Protestants, evangelicals, Catholics, and weekly church attenders. Dr. John Green, Sr. Fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said about CGS\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s work that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153if Democrats learn a lesson from \u00e2\u20ac\u212206 and are able to duplicate these efforts more widely\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6we could potentially see historic shifts in voting blocks that would dramatically change the relationship between faith and politics in this country.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Eric has been a regular speaker on faith and politics on television and radio shows, most often providing a Democratic perspective on conservative programs. Eric\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s background also includes stints with Representative David Price (D-NC), where he handled faith and politics, budget, tax, and homeland security issues. Before that, he worked for Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA) on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Eric has a Master of Divinity and Master of Public Policy from Duke. He is married to his high school sweetheart, Julie.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/esapp"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}