They're used to the concept of "X marks the spot".

what they are voting for. Liquid soap dispensers in the showers?

If for voting in a General Election, further question: did they ever avoid paying any tax?

and I haven't heard anyone else provide one, so for now I'm going to say 'Yes' to prisoners voting.

as George said I haven't heard a good argument against allowing them to vote. Most other civilised countries let their prisoners vote. If you took it to its illogical extreme the government could round up anyone not voting for them and throw them in prison.

I don't actually have a hard opinion on this, just throwing up some thoughts/talking points.

The right to vote was initially based on owning property - conceptually, you had an interest in how the country was run. We have moved away from that minimalist approach, but I wonder if the underlying concept is a valid one:
Government and enfranchisement is a form of contract between us, the people and the government of the day. There's a viable argument, I feel, that convicts have contracted themselves out of the 'system' by7 virtue of having committed a crime and being imprisoned.

At some level, Society has decided that the punishment for committing XXX crime is that you be removed from Society. That seems to me that that can include the right to vote whilst you are in prison.

Can I reframe the question? rather than starting from the default "yes they should because I haven't heard a good argument why not", can someone actually post an affirmative argument?

where do you draw the line if you decide to withdraw that right from people? I can appreciate you might feel upset that the bloke who burgled you 6 months back (and is now inside) still gets a say in who becomes MP for your town. But what about his 3 knuckle-dragging, racist, layabout accomplices who got away with it? Or the fence he sold the goods to? Or the bloke who lent him a car to do the robberies with, knowing his mate was up to no good. Or the person who bought your DVD player off a bloke in a pub and who must have known it was dodgy? All of them are part of the crime "supply chain" to some degree or other.

getting to the polling station if you're locked up so, logically, no.

Regarding the universal right to vote, its probably no different to the universal right to not being mugged or burgled (or worse). So I'm pretty comfortable with prisoners not having a vote until they have served their sentence. Its probably not the biggest frustration on their list either.

In favour:

Firstly, It's a legal right. Who says so? The European Court of Human Rights. We, as a country, signed up to abide by its rulings. If we're getting to pick and choose which ones we obey it kind of makes a nonsense of the whole thing.

Secondly, part of the point of prison is to rehabilitate and playing a part in choosing a government is part of being a citizen.

Thirdly, as I understand it, any votes would be postal and allocated to the prisoner's last constituency of residence. So prisoners couldn't vote en (cell) bloc for a particular candidate.

Against:

As some have said, you give up some rights when you commit a crime, get caught and sent to prison.

It would be uncomfortable for me to see Ian Huntley, Ian Brady or Peter Sutcliffe being allowed to vote. Although I think David Cameron is overdoing it with his "makes me physically sick" comments. I bet it doesn't.

On balance, though, I think this is only an issue because prisoners haven't had the vote before and so it seems a big change. If they'd always had it, it wouldn't be a big deal and I doubt people would be campaigning to take it away.

So I guess that makes me either in favour, or not bothered.

t the bloke who burgled you 6 months back (and is now inside)

The chances that the guy that burgled you six months back is in now prison are sadly extremely slim. Recent experience of the Police and their handling of such crimes suggests that they would give it no priority whatsoever. Instead they are all frantically looking for terrorists, like needles in a burning haystack.

is punishment. Rehabilitation is desirable, of course. But punishment includes taking away freedom on many levels. And the right to vote seems a reasonable element of this. Crime deprives the victim of many things, depriving offenders of the ability to participate in the democratic process seems to me to be the logical consequence of their actions, which are essentially anti-democratic and unjust,

Fcuking parasites.

But that's enough about politicians.

Ha, Ha.

especially, those MPs banged up for fiddling their expenses.

Seriously, it will be hard to draw the line between different types of offender. If you commit a crime against society you forfeit the right to be able to influence how that society is governed. I'm afraid its that simple as far as I'm concerned.

My feeling is also no, for reasons already mentioned.

Further, I don't think you can differentiate between the crimes of the different prisoners - the point remains that they commited a crime severe enough for them to be imprisoned. I think there are issues at present between which crimes lead to prison and which don't, which I'm not sure are going to get resolved, but that's a different argument.

Absolutely not. Economic cooperation is one thing. Judicial sovereignty is quite another. We cannot give way on this. This is is the United Kingdom where citizens enjoy liberties underpinned by the rule of law. If a citizen violates the rule of law, it is right and proper that he foregoes some of his civil liberties.

As if it makes the slightest fucking difference.

If you forfeit rights by committing a crime, could we by extension say that you only get to vote if you're a societal participant, i.e. paying tax ? And why should voting be optional, why not make it mandatory like sunny Oz ?

Not that I'm advocating this or anything. More devil's advocating.

and for the lesser elections (European, etc) where the turnout is embarrassingly low the electorate for these mainly consist of dribbly old men that still live with their mum and they have got their breakfast down their t-shirts, from which day is hard to tell.
Old ladies that get out once a year, usually on the first Thurday in May. Every year it looks like we won't see them again come the next election but they appear and tell us exactly the same racist stories.
The seriously mentally ill.
A first time voter.
A drunk man at 9.55 who spouts about the immigrants.

That's who is deciding our future. Criminals? Bring them on.

to be worrying about prisoners participating in a vote when so few members of the public bother. I've always thought that if you don't exercise your right to vote, then you can't moan when the government does something you don't approve of.

We should adopt the Australian model where it's a legal obligation to vote, I believe. If you don't vote, you become a criminal!

Seriously, I have a knee-jerk reaction to the question, which is that criminals shouldn't have the right. But if I think about it, I can't see why they shouldn't be allowed. As has been said, prison is as much about rehabilitation as punishment, or so the story goes, so let them vote.