The felony/voting rule is part of Jim Crow laws trying to keep blacks from voting. Most people think that felons cannot vote but that's simply not true.
If they have 'paid their debt to society' then why shouldn't they be reinstated as free citizens? Do you not believe in democracy and freedom?
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Restore felons' right to vote
February 15, 2005
The people who run the nation's prisons are hardly known for coddling criminals. As the oldest and largest professional organization for those in the U.S. corrections industry, the American Correctional Association has spent 135 years helping institutions across the country develop best practices for housing and rehabilitating those incarcerated for crimes.
So when this group concludes the nation's interests are best served by giving felons the right to vote the moment they are discharged from incarceration or parole, it is an opinion worth heeding.
"Voting is a fundamental right in a democracy," reads the resolution approved by the 18,000-member ACA during its recent national convention. "A ban on voting after a felon is discharged from correctional supervision (is) contradictory to the goals of a democracy, the rehabilitation of felons and their successful re-entry to the community."
These words have added meaning in Florida. State Sen. Steven Wise, R-Jacksonville, and Senate Majority Leader Alex Villalobos, R-Miami, have pushed Gov. Jeb Bush to stop tinkering with the dysfunctional clemency system and automatically restore voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences.
Acting as the clemency board, Bush and the Cabinet in December adopted new rules to cut some red tape from the state's notoriously tortured clemency process. Under the new rules, some felons will be allowed to regain their civil rights - including voting, holding professional licenses and serving on a jury - without a hearing. Some felons also would see their rights restored if they go five years without an arrest after completing their sentence, while those convicted of specific violent crimes must go 15 years arrest-free.
The ACA said such half-measures "frustrate the offenders in their attempt to fully re-enter society successfully, reduce the voting constituency, and disproportionally exclude a large number of people from participating fully in society."
According to the Miami Herald , thousands of felons are waiting to have their cases heard by the clemency board, which only handles about 200 cases annually. The newspaper also documented that the board has rejected a record 200,000 petitions since 1999 by felons seeking to have their rights restored - the highest rejection rate in 16 years - leaving 500,000 individuals without voting rights.
Florida is one of just seven states that ban felons from voting unless they successfully petition to have their rights restored. Critics charge the 137-year-old system, embedded in"Voting is a fundamental right in a democracy ... A ban on voting after a felon is discharged from correctional supervision (is) contradictory to the goals of a democracy, the rehabilitation of felons and their successful re-entry to the community."
- ACA RESOLUTION
the state Constitution, is rooted in Florida's initial attempts to keep black people from voting. The system still disproportionately affects black people. When Florida officials used a list of felons to trim voter rolls in 2000, more than 44 percent of those barred were black, according to the Palm Beach Post .
Besides saving the state millions of dollars - one court estimated a $34-million cost to prisons just for helping inmates pursue clemency - such a change would correct the current system's biggest problem: It punishes felons long after their sentences are completed.
We hope that Bush - fresh from an election in which state officials were forced to stop using a flawed felon list to scrub voting rolls - listens to the experts and his fellow Republicans. Spending millions to maintain a system that encourages felons to remain divorced from mainstream society helps no one.http://www.righttovote.org/news_news_descrip.asp?ID=59 |
