WARNER ROBINS, Ga. — A Warner Robins teacher is accused of threatening to behead a student after she made a comment about his Israeli flag, according to the Houston County Sheriff’s Office.
I’m going to pretend your question was serious.
Should we allow people with diagnosed psychoses to vote? People with schizophrenia or other psychological conditions?
In the traditional good-and-evil model of the prison system as it exists in the US today, I am very much in favor of allowing prisoners to vote both while in prison and after having served their time. I believe that because I believe that the prison system is fundamentally unjust, that innocent people are jailed, that there is significant racial prejudice constantly driving the system, and that there’s no scientific evidence driven justification for what we do and how we do it. Rubin Carter should have been able to vote. Leonard Peltier should have been able to vote. Until we fix the criminal justice system, I think it’s wrong to deny prisoners the right to vote, and I think we need to make sure their votes are made without coercion and properly registered.
But should we allow someone with a clinically diagnosed psychological condition like schizophrenia to vote? They are wracked by delusions, what does their vote mean? For me, it goes down to the assumption of rational agency being part of the justification of a democratic system in the first place, versus the obvious fear of weaponized medical diagnoses being used for political purposes.
