My first YDN op-ed of my junior year, condemning the disenfranchisement of felons from voting, is on-line here: These disenfranchised voters, like the ones I met in Tampa, are disproportionately the underprivileged, disproportionately people of color, disproportionately those whose families are most threatened by government policies that reward the wealthy and punish the poor. And so the Republican stake in keeping them from the polls is clear, set forward flatly last year of the chairman of the Republican Party of Alabama: "we're opposed to [restoration of their rights] because felons don't tend to vote Republican." More disappointing is the complicity of Democrats in denying the vote from large and growing fractions -- one in three or four of those I encountered in some neighborhoods -- of their key constituencies. Cowed by the threat of seeming soft on crime, too many Democrats have proven themselves soft on democracy. And in so doing, they're not only excluding potential voters, but alienating those voters' neighbors and families, many of whom do not choose to vote on behalf of those who can't but rather choose to abstain entirely in the face of seemingly bipartisan deafness to their communities' concerns about policy and to the suppression of their right to change it. This was the topic of a fair number of blog postings this summer, most of which were consolidated in some form here. Working on this article certainly led to some interesting conversations; let's hope having it published will solicit some spirited response.