The right to vote cannot be forever denied to felons; the rights and obligations of full citizenship shall be protected.

I was watching a news program and a reporter from the NY Times mentioned that he could not vote because he got into a fight in high school. His conviction forever stripped him of the right to vote. He is just the sort of person we should want and need to vote: intelligent, articulate, passionate. Why should an altercation when he was a youth forever deny him the full rights and obligations of citizenship? Why should a state be able to forever deny an American citizen from exercising constitutionally protected federal rights? When we incarcerate minorities at a far greater rate than the white majority, we are disenfranchising a population. We may never have "equal justice under the law" if we keep denying the right to vote change the law by those victimized by it.