Most Asian Americans Don’t Want to Give Prisoners the Right to Vote, Poll Shows
By Carl Samson
Majority of Asian Americans do not want to give prisoners the right to vote, a new poll has revealed.
According to The Hill and Harris X survey, 82% of registered Asian American voters rejected the proposal of allowing incarcerated felons to vote, contributing to a total of 69% who voted against the idea.
The poll, which surveyed 1,002 registered voters between April 27 and April 28, comes after Sen. Bernie Sanders brought attention to the topic last month.
“When we look at the history of why our country has banned incarcerated people from voting, we must understand that the efforts to rob citizens of their voting rights was a legacy of slavery and continuing racist attitudes post-Jim Crow,” Sanders, who is running for president, wrote in an op-ed for USA Today.
After Asian Americans, 74% of Whites, 66% of Hispanics, 60% of other ethnicities and 43% of Black Americans voted against the proposal.
In terms of party identification, 85% of Republicans and 61% of Democrats rejected the idea.
Opposing figures are much higher on the subject of felons serving time for terrorism-related crimes, with Whites voting at 92%, Asians at 91%, Hispanics at 88% and Blacks at 75%.
Nine out of 10 (95%) who identified as other ethnicities voted the same way.
Sanders’s position has since been challenged by critics, including fellow presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who accused him of distracting the public from the larger issue of incarcerating non-violent felons.
“If Bernie Sanders wants to get involved in a conversation about whether Dylann Roof and the Marathon bomber should have the right to vote, my focus is liberating black and brown people and low-income people from prison,” he told PBS.
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