Bernie's bad voting proposal

Earlier this year, Democrats in Washington proposed sweeping election reforms that included expanding early voting for at least 15 days, allowing voters to register on the day of an election, and limiting states’ efforts to purge voter rolls. Bernie Sanders wants to go even further.

Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, said recently that he believes felons should be allowed to vote — while still in prison.

“I think that is absolutely the direction we should go,” Sanders, among the front-runners for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, said at a town hall in Iowa.

Vermont is one of two states — Maine is the other — that allow prisoners to vote. Oklahoma is among roughly two dozen states where felons lose the right to vote until after they have completed their sentences and parole or probation. Fourteen states and the District of Columbia restore felons’ voting rights immediately after they’re released from prison.

In Iowa and Kentucky, felons’ voting rights are lost for good. Iowa’s governor, a Republican, backs the idea of a constitutional amendment to let convicts who have served their sentences to be able to vote again.