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Political theorists have long criticized policies that deny voting rights to convicted felons. However, some have recently turned to democratic theory to defend this practice, arguing that democratic self-determination justifies, or even requires, disenfranchising felons. I review these new arguments, acknowledge their force against existing criticism, and then offer a new critique of disenfranchisement that engages them on their own terms. Using democratic theory's "all-subjected principle," I argue that liberal democracies undermine their own legitimacy when they deny the vote to felons and prisoners. I then show how this argument overcomes obstacles that cause problems for other critiques of disenfranchisement. In democratic societies where universal adult suffrage is the norm, policies that exclude individuals from the franchise deserve careful scrutiny. In the United States, citizens imprisoned on felony charges are almost always barred from voting in local, state, and national elections. 1 Moreover, thirty-five out of fifty U.S. states practice some form of post-release felon disenfranchisement, meaning that many who have paid their debts to society in prison are nonetheless barred from the franchise until their suspension period ends. Even then, restoration can be obstructed by fees, resistant officials, and arbitrary procedures. 2 In an era of so-called mass incarceration, felon and prisoner disenfranchisement policies prohibit a significant proportion of U.S. citizens-especially at state levels-from exercising their most fundamental political right. Given the disproportionate impact of policing and criminal conviction on non-Whites, historically marginalized groups are disenfranchised at especially alarming rates. 3 1 Maine and Vermont are outliers that do not restrict the voting rights of imprisoned persons with felony convictions.

This article reinterprets Hegel’s much discussed “failure” to theorize a remedy for the poverty that disrupts modern society. I argue that Hegel does not offer any solution to the problem of poverty because, in his view, the sovereign state depends upon the persistence of poverty. Whereas a state’s achievement of external sovereignty requires the presence of another state, its achievement of internal sovereignty requires the presence of a different, internal other. This role is played by the impoverished and rebellious “rabble,” which opposes the state’s unity and stability. Ethical life cannot eliminate poverty because poverty, and the insecurity that it engenders, are dialectical conditions of the state’s highest development. This interpretation reveals a critical dimension to Hegel’s political philosophy, insofar as the state’s promise of actualized freedom can only be sustained in relation to a mass of internal “outsiders” to whom that freedom does not extend.

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