The disqualification of prisoners from voting makes it clear that our democratic rights as citizens include the obligation to obey the law. Prisoners, however, would have opted out of that social contract, and often in quite substantial ways. When people break the law and are sentenced to prison, they have not met their side of that social contract, that obligation to society, and therefore should lose the right to vote when they are in prison. By giving rights to voters, it is giving back that right to criminals, that voice to criminals, when it is these very criminals who have taken that voice away from their victims. If someone is sent to prison because he has committed a serious crime, that comes with consequences, and as my colleague Simeon Brown has mentioned, National believes that if you do the crime, you must do the time. Going to prison is a punishment and should be treated as such.