I n election years like this, there is always a spike of interest in whether felons ought to be allowed to vote. Only two states, Maine and Vermont, allow felons still in prison to vote. Some states — and the District of Columbia — allow felons to vote once they have been released from prison, even if they are on probation or parole. Others, including Maryland, don’t allow voting until the sentence has been fully served, including probation and parole. Finally, some states like Virginia restore the right to vote only after full service of the sentence and only on a case-by-case basis. We favor this latter approach.

Well, why not let felons vote? Because you don’t have a right to make laws if you aren’t willing to follow them yourself. To participate in self-government, you must be willing to accept the rule of law.

We don’t let everyone vote; children, noncitizens and the mentally incompetent don’t. Voting requires certain minimum, objective standards of trustworthiness, loyalty and responsibility, and those who have committed serious crimes against their fellow citizens don’t meet those standards.

Shouldn’t “some” felons be allowed to vote? Yes, and some shouldn’t. The decision to restore the right to vote should not be made automatically. It should be made carefully, weighing the seriousness of the crime, how long ago it was committed, whether there is a pattern of crime, and any evidence that the felon has really turned over a new leaf.

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Haven’t felons already paid their debt to society? They’ve paid enough of their debt to be allowed out of prison, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t continuing consequences. We don’t let felons possess firearms or serve on juries, for instance. By the way, my opponent today, Marc Mauer, as well as most of the groups that favor felons voting, want them to be able to vote while they are still in prison, so this “paid their debt to society” argument is a red herring.

Are laws barring felons from voting racist? No. They have a disproportionate impact on some racial groups, because at any point in time there will always be some groups that commit more crimes than others. But that doesn’t make the laws racist, just as the fact that more crimes are committed by men doesn’t make criminal laws sexist.

The people whose voting rights will be diluted the most if criminals are allowed to vote are the law-abiding people living in high-crime areas, who are themselves disproportionately black and Latino. As usual, soft-on-crime liberals like to act as if they are championing the rights of racial minorities, but they ignore the fact that the victims of crime are disproportionately people of color.

But weren’t these laws passed historically to keep African-Americans from voting? A few Southern states did so 100 years ago, but those statutes are no longer on the books — and they would be unconstitutional if they were. Today’s laws have their roots in ancient Greece and Rome, came to the American colonies from England, and are found in nearly every state in the country where they were adopted nondiscriminatorily.

Don’t these laws keep felons from rejoining society? Unfortunately, most released felons commit more crimes, but it is ridiculous to assert that the reason they do so is that they can’t vote.

Do these laws violate the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act?

No. The Supreme Court has ruled that they do not violate the U.S. Constitution, and indeed the Constitution itself contains language approving of felon disenfranchisement. Similarly, the history of the Voting Rights Act makes it clear that it did not intend to require states to let criminals vote.

Roger Clegg is president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative civil-rights research organization in Falls Church.