Pubdate: Thu, 31 Jul 2003
Source: Press Journal (FL)
Copyright: 2003, The E.W. Scripps Co.
Contact:  http://www1.tcpalm.com/tcp/press_journal/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2977
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/states/fl/ (Florida)

WRONG TO VOTE

Restoring Felons' Rights Portends Political Shift In Florida, Nation.

Hold onto your voter-registration card: Felons have opened another front in 
Florida's electoral battleground.

A group of criminal-rights activists convinced a circuit judge in 
Tallahassee last week that 125,000 Florida felons hadn't received 
appropriate state assistance and advice to restore their civil rights - 
including the right to vote.

Now, the Department of Corrections expects that 30,000 felons will regain 
those rights this year, with many more to follow. And make no mistake: 
That's good news for the Democratic Party, which lost the Florida 
presidential election and the White House by a mere 537 votes in 2000.

Overall, 410,000 Floridians have been barred from voting because of their 
past felony convictions. Of that number, more than one-third are 
African-American.

"Because African Americans vote Democratic 90 percent of the time, they 
could make a big difference in a close election," says Jim Kane, an 
independent pollster and publisher of Florida Voter in Fort Lauderdale.

And that's not all. Other election watchers - noting that ex-cons, 
regardless of race, tend to favor Democrats - figure a half-dozen U.S. 
Senate races could hang in the balance across the country.

The politically minded National Organization for the Advancement of Colored 
People knows this, and has made restoration of felons' voting rights a top 
priority. In doing so, the NAACP and its running mates at the American 
Civil Liberties Union are unabashedly playing the race card, likening 
Florida law to the Jim-Crow era.

Florida is one of six states that deny ex-felons the right to vote unless 
they take steps to have their civil rights restored. Their petitions are 
decided on a case-by-case basis and, so far, Gov. Jeb Bush opposes a 
"carte-blanche" restoration of voting rights.

But last week's court decision, which ensures state assistance in the 
petition process, could provide the wedge that pries open the ballot box to 
more murderers, rapists and other assorted merchants of mayhem.

Felon-rights groups are becoming more vocal here and nationally. One Web 
site, (VotingExCons.com), calls for, among other things, hiring preferences 
for "qualified" ex-felons and an end to the "drug-war hoax."

Meantime, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has introduced legislation to sweep 
away the state laws and grant felon voting rights across America. His bill 
would cover 4 million U.S. felons who have "paid their debt to society."

In a not-so-thinly veiled threat, Randy Berg of the Florida Justice 
Institute declared, "If you don't restore their civil rights, they will go 
back to a life of crime."

Could this be what the founders had in mind when they penned the Bill of 
Rights and created the world's greatest representative democracy? At this 
rate, the 2004 election will be most interesting indeed. 
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