Why not just let all the prisoners out and done with it?

Jack Straw, if you let prisoners vote you're a bigger twat than I thought you were, and I thought you were an enormous, possibly planetary scale, twat to start with. This is not disenfranchising people because they live in shit houses or are the wrong colour or don't have testicles or all the other bullshit reasons used in the past for denying someone a vote. People in prison are, with a few inevitable exceptions, in there because of their own fucking choices. I'm not going to get all Daily Wail about it but fuck's sake, you can't fucking expect to commit crime and retain all the fucking rights of regular citizens. I know that losing a vote isn't a disincentive to committing crime but that's not the fucking point. A prison sentence is a temporary suspension of an individual's normal rights: they can't wander out to the pub or spend the weekend at the beach or do almost anything else that citizens may choose to do... and that's because they're in a fucking prison because of their crimes. So what's different about voting for fuck's sake? Some argue that those imprisoned for less serious crimes, situations where negligence rather than malevolence was at the bottom of it, shouldn't lose their vote and that it's all a bit arbitrary. Bollocks. It's more arbitrary to do what Straw is considering, and in fact what we've done here*, and pick a term above which you can't vote and below which you can. I have a vastly simpler and non-arbitrary proposal. If you can get to the polling station you can vote, if not you fucking can't. Simple as that. If it's a minor offence and the ability to vote is a big deal then try to arrange day release for election day or parole before the election. Or a tag. Whatever, but don't start bleating about not being able to vote because your own fucking decisions landed you behind bars. Tough shit.

*The laugh about prisoners here being allowed to vote is that Australia is unusual in that voting is compulsory, and the preferential system we have can force your vote to go to a candidate or party you despise. So I wonder how they'd deal with someone already in prison refusing to vote because not being forced to vote for a bunch of bastards is the only benefit of being inside in the first place.