People convicted of a felony loose citizenship, and the right to vote. Once time is served, and citizenship is restored, you may vote again. The Boston bomber will never be in a position to vote, nor should he be.
Convicts don't lose citizenship and cannot lose citizenship for any reason, including treason, in the United States except for voluntary renunciation at a US embassy in a foreign country.
As part of the Black Codes in the aftermath of the US Civil War, losing the right to vote on conviction of a felony was a thinly veiled racist policy to take a swing at the disproportionately represented African American population in prison. The United States is nearly unique in this respect among leading democracies. Several states since the 1990s have begun the process to unwind what is and what was intended to be a racist policy.
That's why I've ALWAYS felt that there should even be voting machines on Death Row. I said that long before Bernie ever said it (at least to my knowledge), I was saying it in the 1980s. And, Alnitak, you're spot-on EXACTLY why these disenfranchisement laws were enacted. Very possibly WITHOUT EXCEPTION in all of U. S. history, those laws were put in for racial reasons, or the perception that felons would mostly vote for "the other" party that was not currently in power in the respective states...or, often, both. That generally means that such laws were likely to be enacted by Democrats before about 1970, and by Republicans since.
I was very surprised to see Florida (in recent months) being one of the states actually undoing these terrible disenfranchisement laws, though. Not one of those places I expected.
We can't possibly pay for everything he wants to do. Heck, we'd have a hard time paying for just one of his campaign issues. He's quick to say free health care, free college, reduced college debt and expanded social security but I've yet to hear how he's going to do it. It's not something I'm willing to 'wait and see'
We USAns often throw around the phrase "free health care" as though it actually is free, and not paid for in any way. Health care IS A THING OF VALUE, and Economics 101 recognizes that there wouldn't be a health care system for more than a few nanoseconds if hospitals, doctors, pharma, etc. were not being paid ANYTHING BY ANYBODY. Usually "free health care" should, well, be called something more accurate such as "universal tax-funded health care." Some of us talk about the "free health care" in places like Sweden and Germany
as though it actually is free...but it ISN'T. Those countries pay substantially more taxes than we USAns do because, again, the money has to come from somewhere...but also keep in mind that in USA the entire healthcare system is completely given free reign to charge absolutely the very top dollar that they feel like charging, and Big Pharma IS NEVER taken to task for increasing a life-saving medicine 22-fold unless the public protests go over-the-top. Shame is the only weapon that we have against these excesses; Martin Shrkeli DID NOT go to prison because he raised an important prescription drug by 53 times, but because of fraud in some unrelated matters.
All that said, the DIFFERENCE between taxes in USA and Germany is
much less than the additional amounts that one has to pay out-of-pocket to get good health care AND send their children to college for free. I've said for decades that I would FAR rather pay taxes at German rates and actually get the perks that are automatic and ASSUMED there, but which here almost sound like something from another planet, while people in USA are dying because they can't afford even clinic exams for fear that they will have to spend a few hundred thousand treating something and become homeless, etc.
