Which States Restore Felons Voting Rights? And Why Do Most Embezzlers Support Ted Cruz?

Quote of the Day: Ted Cruz Angling For Some of That Trump Magic

—By Kevin Drum

From Ted Cruz, apparently feeling gloomy today over Donald Trump's ability to get attention with outrageous statements:

The overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats. The media doesn't report that.

Huh. Could be, I suppose. Most convicted felons are pretty poor, and poor people tend not to vote for Republicans. Why would they? Of course, they tend not to vote for Democrats, either. They just don't vote.

Presumably, Cruz got his data from this study,which estimates that 73 percent of "hypothetical felon voters" would vote for Democrats. However,a more recent study that looks at how many actualfelons register as Democrats puts the number at 62 percent for New York, 52 percent for New Mexico, and 55 percent for North Carolina. That's still not bad, Democrats! You have the felon vote cornered. Except for one thing: only about a third of them registered at all, only about a fifth have active registration records, and only about 10 percent or so actually voted for president recently. Liberals may generally be in favor of allowing released felons to vote, but it sure isn't because they think it will help them at the polls. Working for felon voting rights is about the most inefficient and futile way imaginable of getting out the vote.

In any case, anyone can play this game. Just find some demographic group that tends to vote for Party X, and then find some bad thing also associated with that group. In this case, poor people tend to vote for Democrats, and felons tend to be poor. Bingo. Most felons are Democrats.

Or this: rich people tend to vote for Republicans, and income-tax cheats tend to be rich. So most income-tax cheats are Republicans.

Or this: Middle-aged men tend to vote for Republicans, and embezzlers tend to be middle-aged men. So most embezzlers are Republicans.

We could do this all day long, but what's the point? The whole exercise is kind of silly. If Ted Cruz wants some attention, he's going to have to do better than this.