Why can't Johnny vote?

My cousin -- a former drug dealer who converted to Islam in prison, but who now is a Republican-leaning atheist with a penchant for golf -- will not be going to the polls this Nov. 2. Although he was paroled from jail, has stayed out of trouble and managed to find a legitimate job, he's not eligible to vote in New Jersey. Not until his parole ends. No matter that he pays taxes or that proposed legislation aimed at ex-cons affects him.

This is the first presidential election he's been clean long enough to care about, and he won't have an opportunity to participate. The government will take his money, but they want his sense of civic pride to sit this one out.

Aside from not being allowed to vote until the next presidential election, he's not permitted to drink -- even though he's never been an alcoholic -- and he can't visit Atlantic City -- even though he's never been a gambler. The government owns him because he owes a debt to society, and their main goal is to put so many onerous and irrelevant restrictions on him that he's bound to run afoul of one of them.

That's great news for the Republicans because, putting aside my cousin's strange political alliance, there isn't a huge Ex-Cons for President Bush movement. If this race is as contentious as the last (and I'm sure it will be), it could be that ("accidentally" or purposely) disenfranchising a fairly large population will once again contribute to the razor-thin margin.

According to a study conducted by the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis, Bush would have been short 80,000 votes in Florida in the 2000 election if the state allowed ex-felons to vote and even a small portion of them showed up. But Florida permanently disenfranchises felons, as do Iowa, Kentucky, Mississipi and Virginia.

An estimated 4.7 million Americans aren't eligible to vote this year because they're in prison, on parole or probation, or have a felony record. Disenfranchisement rates in the country, according to the ACLU, range from 5.9 percent in Virginia to 0.4 percent in Pennsylvania, and one-third of the disenfranchised are actually "free." They did their time, including parole, and whether they'd still like nothing more than to steal your car is irrelevant: They paid the debt society said they owed.

According to the Washington Post, Todd Gaziano of the Heritage Foundation argues that felons might form some kind of "anti-law-enforcement bloc" and elect bad officials.

What, there's going to be a mass write-in for a Chris Rock/Dave Chappelle ticket? They're going to form a lobbyist group to demand free porn and Olde English for inmates?

Realistically, most of them are going to be robbing your house while you're out voting, but why not give a few hundred thousand of them the benefit of the doubt? It can't be any worse than Luanne from Arkansas voting for Bush because "it's not a good time to change presidents."

While Southern states tend to have more restrictive statutes, other states often erect unofficial barriers that make it difficult for ex-cons to exercise their right to vote. A class-action lawsuit in New York alleges that local election officials demand discharge papers that don't exist, provide misleading information or invent reasons to prevent them from voting -- effectively disenfranchising high-crime neighborhoods that already feel cut off from the mainstream.

If some people no longer have access to a basic right of citizenship, it should come as no surprise when they're not too keen on the obligations of citizenship.

No other democratic country disenfranchises those who served their sentences, and countries such as Japan and Germany allow and even encourage prisoners to vote. Two American states that permit inmates to vote -- Maine and Vermont -- have yet to elect Vern Schillinger to Congress.

Democrats could make it a campaign issue -- "We want to integrate convicted criminals back into the mainstream and encourage them to participate in charting their country's path" -- but they're pussies. They know that if they utter one word that could be remotely construed as supporting criminals, the Republicans will release an ad showing wolves with a ballot between their teeth stalking suburban mothers.

In swing states, such as Ohio, Republicans plan on using partisan challengers to question whether a person is eligible to vote, thus slowing down the process and potentially intimidating a section of the voting population already unsure of their status.

Every citizen in the United States should be allowed to vote. Killed your mom and ate her heart? Here's your ballot. Spent a year in the clink because you couldn't afford an Escalade without selling heroin to suburban white kids? You're in District 14.

You shouldn't have to register. Assign each voter to a polling place, whether it's in Cleveland or Cellblock C. Require proper identification to vote. Check off that said voter showed up. And there you go: democracy in action.

If they can't show up at the proper location, they're either too dumb to vote and we should be grateful they ended up at the local White Castle instead or a member of the Young Republicans called them and pretended to be with the election board.

Providing jack-off material for white misogynists since 1997.

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