Why Are There No Polling Stations in Prisons?

Why would it not be sufficient to say that the state can make loss of the right to vote, like loss of other liberty interests, punishment for crime? Why if the state can deprive people of other fundamental rights can it not also deprive of the right to vote?

Once the judgment has been satisfied in other respects, continued deprivation of the right to vote may be questionable, though it is hard given section 2 of the fourteenth amendment to assert that this is a constitutional issue. Given the historical record on the subject (including the centuries-long rule that felons are legally dead after judgment), it is also hard to see how depriving felons under imprisonment of their right to vote can be "on account" of their race or previous condition of servitude under the terms of the Fifteenth Amendment.

If the point of the essay is to seek answers to legal questions, these are the ones it should consider. If the point was a rhetorical defense of allowing prisoners to vote, shouldn't the argument be about why the state should seek to allow them to vote, not whether it has the power to deny the vote? The latter seems undeniably poor ground on which to make a stand.