Prisoner’s right to vote

John: Prisoners should have a right to vote because some of them are not bad people. They just committed some petty economic crimes to survive. Some even were erroneously convicted.

is there a fallacy? Just focus on the argument. Don’t consider the law of any country.

There is quite a bit to this statement, but the core question seems to revolve around the nature of a human's rights.  Because the act of voting is a social construct, the rules related thereto are subjective and rooted in the majority's preferences and the rules upon which they agree. 

Given that prisoners are incarcerated and isolated from society, the de facto answer within that paradigm is that there is no fallacy. The argument is roughly structured: If a person commits crimes against society, they should be isolated from society. (This is an opinion.) If they are truly isolated, then they should not participate in society's follies, like voting.

The introduction of the notion of errors as they related to convictions is superficial.  In fact, the question of error should be targeted more deeply if we are truly going to make this a question of human rights.  The idea that some people are good people and others bad again introduces a degree of subjectivity that renders the discussion inconclusive until there is solid agreement as to the nature of human rights.  Does a person lose her rights if she does a bad thing?

Presupposing that a human should have the right to live completely freely and enjoy personal access to their own full life, liberty and happiness to the extent that it does not encroach upon another person's right to the same, then they should certainly be allowed to vote and others should be freely allowed to ignore those and other votes in accordance with their own social agreements.

Thus, the overriding fallacy is one of non sequitur due to the fact that we cannot ascertain the status of the prisoner's condition as a human, nor can we determine the weighting of the subjective terms presented like "bad, petty, erroneous and crime."  At best, conclusions would be subjective or indeterminate.

He's making a fallacy by saying that  all prisoners should vote because  some of them  might be good. Other than the extreme opinions in the phrases, he's lumping all prisoners in with the some prisoners. A more correct ideal would be "Some prisoners should have a right to vote because some of them are not bad people. Only those certain prisoners should have the right to vote"

That's my thoughts on the statement.

I would ask why some of them being good is relevant, as allowing all of them to vote because some are good makes some of them being good a moot point. I feel that there's a fallacy there but can't think of it, something to do with exception to the rule. 

Some people have a high alcohol tolerance, does that mean we should raise the alcohol limit for driving to cater for the exceptions?

Also the implication is that people in prison shouldn't have the right to vote because they are bad. Is that the reason? If it isn't then the argument falls flat. And if it is the reason it raises the question of why only bad people in prison shouldn't be allowed to vote, why not all bad people? What metric are we going to use for who is good and who is bad? 

Sounds like special pleading.

The argument seems to be implying only some prisoners, as defined by him, should be allowed to vote.

Prisoners should have a right to vote because some of them are not bad people.

The implied argument here is that only good people should have the right to vote. As long as that is agreed upon argument, then no problem (still ambiguous... explained below). Otherwise, it could be seen as a Strawman Fallacy .

They just committed some petty economic crimes to survive. Some even were erroneously convicted. 

This is black and white thinking (more of cognitive bias). Does it really make sense to lump all prisoners in one group?

Overall, I would say this is simply a weak argument. First, the person should establish what justifies taking one's right to vote away then demonstrating that prisoners don't meet that criteria, or better, which prisoners do and which don't meet the criteria.

The strongest case for this argument would be: (1) some of the prisoners should have the right to vote, but unfortunately, we can't do that without including all of them (because of procedural reasons or paper work to determine each prisoner's right to vote). 

(2) The right to vote of some overrides the injustice of including all.

Therefore, prisoners should have the right to vote.

Putting it this way, now we would have to question the premises rather than declaring a fallacy. For (1), we would argue that either no prisoner deserves to vote, or there are actual efficient ways to include just the deserving ones. If we want to attack (2), we would have to argue that the right of some does not override the injustice of including all; for example, using the alcohol analogy described in the comments and show how that is relevant to voting (similar degrees of danger or something).

John's argument seems to be poorly phrased/formulated. The intention of John's argument seems to be that not all crimes or criminals should be treated equally in relation to the loss of voting rights, which is what John seems to mean by "some of them are not bad people". John didn't say if he meant some or all, so that would need to be clarified before addressing that aspect of the argument.

The issue being discussed is felony disenfranchisement, in which anyone convicted of a felony loses their right to vote regardless of which felony was committed or if it was a false conviction. John is arguing that some of those felons should have their voting rights restored but due to ambiguity it's unclear if he means to have all felons' voting rights restored to restore the rights of those individuals, as well elaboration on things like what criteria to deem someone's rights worthy of being restored, if it's possible to restore only the rights of those individuals or if all of them have to have their rights restored together, etc. To properly discuss the topic you'd have to bring up the various laws surrounding that, the systemic issues that lead to voter suppression through false convictions and the broader issue of human rights in relation to prisoners.