How would that be any different than banning someone from running a company after they've been found guilty of fraud or any other way of breaking the law about how to run companies?
If they've been proven unable to follow the law, they shouldn't be able to be elected.
As some extra context here, the judge mentioned that she was totally recognizing how heavy the situation was. But she mentioned a few things:
- it's been found that it was all part of a system designed from the very top of the party (so MLP) to embezzle money
- it's been noted that during the entire procedure, all the defendants showed complete denial of the facts and no will to accept that they did something bad
As such she pointed out that they was a high risk that they would do it again, and that's what tipped the scale in favor of banning them right away. I agree with that.
If people want to vote for someone, that’s their democratic right. And if they make a mistake, they’ll learn from the consequences. But the decision should ultimately rest with the voters, not the courts.
But this is a case of cheating. If a candidate cheats in an election, that should disqualify them because otherwise the election is tainted.
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affaire_des_assistants_parleme...
This is just the latest example showing how wrong your take is.
1. You win when a 1 is rolled
2. You win when a 1 or a 2 is rolled
Despite both of the situations being less than 50% the 2nd one is still more effective.
(Also your comment implies Trump's campaign doesn't have boots on the ground which obviously isn't true ...)
That decision should lie with the voters, you say.
So which takes precedence? Prison, where they are serving a sentence? Or the democratic role?
After all, the same public, using their democratic rights, voted for a system in which that person was sentenced to prison.
So which vote is more important? The vote that says that "X is a crime, and if you are justly convicted, the sentence is Y"? Or the vote that says "If I want you to be our leader, that's more important than that previous application of justice"?
You aren’t the first person to have the thought you are expounding above.
There is no final arbitrator that is above all others.
Liberal democracies are build on the principle that no institution is beyond corruption. That's why they build systems based on separation of powers and checks and balances.
(1) Courts should be independent, because executive branch can be corrupt and law-making branch (voters and their representatives) don't always want to follow the laws they set up.
(2) Law making branch (elections, representatives) should be immune from courts and executive branch messing with them. Lawmakers have immunity from courts and executive. Courts and executive branch should not be able to limit candidates too much.
(3) Executive branch should execute laws, but not allowed to make them. Courts should keep the executive branch in check and have at least some immunity form it.
It's all balancing acts. Different countries have different balances.
> And who should decide that if not the courts?
We could trust voters to take that into the account when making decision who to vote.
It's an ontological issue, if everyone is potentially compromised, how do you know anything ? It's also leveraged by biased medias to discredit old institutions and suddenly no more counter powers..
You just made a strong case for freedom of speech and free press.
It's the pragmatic acknowledgment that human fallibility necessitated institutional safeguards against the concentration of power. Enlightenment thinkers like Montesquieu, came up with it.
Because it gives incumbents a strong incentive to try influencing the courts against their opponents.
I believe - yes, it is my opinion only - that existence of such incentives and a temptation to act upon them is, in the long run, more dangerous to democracy than allowing felons into elections.
People respond to incentives. If we know anything at all about human behavior, it is that people respond to incentives. And there is no shiny nice wall separating democracies from authoritarian states. Countries slide along the scale, and they can absolutely slide in the wrong direction.
This is super dangerous “both sides”-ism.
Only one side is trying to do what you think “those in power” do.
Nazis will argue up and down about their right to free speech, right up until the moment they are in power. And guess what happens then?
And as for France, that is why I don't trust Mélenchon any more than Le Pen, and they have 50 per cent of voters between them. Two far-somethings don't make a democracy.
The debate is effectively between classical Liberalism, and authoritarianism/patromonialism/fascism.
Forget what people called themselves: the peoples republic of North Korea certainly isn’t a republic.
Socialist Left/Capitalist Right is an outdated dichotomy that is only in service of authoritarians.
You just answer your own question!
Since politicians will cheat democracy, they will use the system to ban people running for office that threaten their power.
That's the concept of the separation of powers. Of course judges will have opinions and can never truly be objective (no such thing exists anyway), but their main job is to apply the law. And the concept of appeal and (in France) "cassation", which meana judgment can be revised up to two times, are there so that no single judge ruling can be definitive in isolation.
If politicians can use the judicial system to ban political opponents, the system is broken and powers are not separated in the right way. And I'll definitely not say that France has a perfect separation (the president concentrate a lot more than it should), but it's still there and this wasn't such a case (in the past two years, Le Pen and the RN is the group that Macron has been willingly compromising with and letting arbitrate a lot of stuff)
But judges don't determine which cases they will hear, prosecutors do.
You could have 12 people violate the law, but if the prosecutor decides not to pursue 11 of them, only the 1 will face any consequences.
US code is comprised of tens of thousands of laws. It's not hard to find one that you've violated at some point in your life.
Most of the time they aren't prosecuted. But if they decide to, a judge will have to find you guilty.
Why would you want that? Didn't history teach us better?
>> Separately, here in the U.S., I take issue with the fact that ex-felons are denied the right to vote
Well, ex-felons can become Potus, so that's that.
I don't have a strong opinion on it wither way, but the GP's opinion seems totally reasonable to me.
Why shouldn't the public be able to elect whoever they want? If the courts can block candidates before they run, the courts can effectively circumvent checks and balances before the person could be elected.
> Didn't history teach us better?
I'm not sure what you're referring to here, help me out. What examples of history show the universal downsides when courts can't disqualify potential candidates?
Because some types of illegal behaviour of candidates can influence the vote.
This isn't about a court banning MLP because of her views or policy proposals (that would be very bad) but because she has been show to have comitted fraud by abusing EU money to pay for her own party.
Unlike in the US there are strict rules in France about how much politicians can spend on campainging and where the funds can come from that are intended to ensure a level playing field rather than favouring rich candidates.
If courts couldn't ban candidates who don't respect the rules then elections could be "bought" illegaly.
The comment I relied to was talking about judicial powers in general, and referenced the US rather than France.
My point really isn't specific to any one country though. If an electoral system is meant to be democratic, IMO people should be able to vote for whomever they want. If a candidate can get enough support to win, so be it.
That doesn't preclude us from having laws protecting our right to free and fair elections though. A candidate will absolutely influence the vote, that's the candidate's whole job. There has to be lines drawn where it goes from campaigning to impeding a democratic election, I wasn't arguing against that.
Once you give the courts the power to disqualify candidates you open the door to massive potential for political witch hunts with the express goal of disqualifying the opposition.
Since the executive branch effectively controls the justice department, this is a pretty scary thought.
France has an additional layer of independence compared to the U.S. because of the juge d’instruction (investigating judge), who is also supposed to be independent from the executive, unlike prosecutors.
I say in principle because, judges are appointed in France and not elected. The executive as some control through appointments and career advancements but they are not supposed to use it to sanction or reward the judges.
The effectiveness of these independence mechanisms remains a subject of active debate, as evidenced by the relatively recent changes made to them.
The problem is not the power. The problem is the politicisation.
Its unreasonable to say powers should never be abusable, but it isn't hard for a political system to become politicized. That shouldn't be all it takes.
At the end of the day if someone has the ability to prevent you from using your power, they are the ones who actually have power. So who watches the watchmen?
The US tries to solve this conundrum by making the checks on power a self-reinforcing circle. "Checks and balances". But at the end of the day, the Constitution is just a piece of paper, and all it takes to abuse power once given to you is to convince yourself you have the right.
We can diffuse the power so much that not one person can abuse it. But that has the problem of making action so impossible that the power is never used and nothing gets done. Equally problematic.
That's why it's so important to elect people of high character. Most politicians fail this test.
> That's why it's so important to elect people of high character. Most politicians fail this test.
I'd say we have failed to build a system that incentivizes anyone of high character to run for office.
Courts give orders, but the coercive powers of fines and incarceration are administrative. At the federal level, and the few states I'm familiar with, these are executive branch powers.
To whatever degree the founders were deeply flawed people, they understood power quite well. They didn't create a democracy as much as they created a polyarchy. Their interest was to make ambitions compete. Ambition to counter ambition.
They were most concerned by consolidated power. Monarchy. For obvious reasons.
Your problem is with human nature - it's not going to change.
We'll never have a system where we find "good humans" who don't have the urge to win by any means necessary. So you need to devise a system that makes that as hard as possible.
Anyway POTUS is likely the only job a convicted felon can get.
Someone who committed something heinous like felony assault, there’s still an easy argument to be made that they should be allowed to both run for office and vote.
But if someone was guilty of some kind of corruption, bribery, taking bribes, spying, insurrection, treason, organized crime, violating their oath of office, or anything else that suggests they are not going to serve with the best interests of their constituents and the world at heart, they should absolutely not be allowed to run for office, and maybe should not be allowed to vote.
More broadly, I believe Democrats would gain much more support if they focused on a few key issues—ones that have broad consensus and appeal to independents—and pursued them with laser focus. Instead, they tend to chase after every single distraction Trump throws their way, which only plays into his strategy.
It's really who you trust more: courts or the people.
1. French law recognizes that French people are not trusted to weigh in the conviction properly, and the court sentences put limits to how can and can't run.
2. On the other hand, corrupting of the courts would prevent correcting the system by voting. If the courts are corrupt all hope is lost.
Just last week a turkish court arrested the mayor of Istanbul under similar "corruption" charges. He happens to be the most popular opposition politician challenging Erdogan.
EDIT: forgot to mention that recently Romanian supreme court canceled the elections altogether because the current government did not like the guy who won the first round. And of course he is not allowed to run in the rerun of the elections. People's votes do not seem to count any longer.
Where do you get your information, Fox News?
It was because of grievous breaches of campaign financing. The kind of thing that brings the integrity of their electoral system at serious risk.
On the other hand, if only those who really deserve it lose their right to vote (i.e. a small fraction of the population), then it doesn't really matter if they can vote or not - their small numbers mean they won't make a difference. But the benefit is that disenfranchisement can no longer be used as a political weapon.
No doubt that this will only strengthen the claims that this is politically motivated, and the timing is obviously very "interesting"... So unclear how this will play out in public opinion and polls.
You have a _CURRENT_ felon serving as POTUS.
Oh, it's Trump, they said, well, yes, he has been convicted, but because a sentence has not been imposed or completed he's akshualllly not reallly a felon... yet.
All the inmates in Florida prisons whose sentences have not been completed were very surprised to learn they were still eligible to vote.
Except, no, this is just for Trump.
The real responsible person is Marine Le Pen: Don't commit crimes and you won't have these problems.
Felons shouldn't be eligible for political positions though.
Separately, here in the U.S., I take issue with the fact that ex-felons are denied the right to vote. I believe we should push for a constitutional amendment that guarantees the right to vote for every U.S. citizen—regardless of their criminal record or other issues.