It’s one of seven states that do that. Here’s a link to a PDF file about it.
Are you saying that the Democrats are a bunch of crooks?
Hey, that almost resembles humor. :rolleyes:
Not all democrats are crooks. All crooks are democrats. In Florida, anyway.
Oh come on, credit where credit due. If you’re really worried about being a good citizen and staying enfranchised and civic responsibilities, you don’t commit crimes and land in prison as a felon in the frickin first place.
While the disenfranchised criminals do bear much of the responsibility for their own situations, they aren’t the ones who decided that committing a crime means being stripped of your voting rights. The state did that. Florida is one of only seven states where felons don’t regain their voting rights after serving their sentences.
The laws of Florida, as you’ve discovered since asking this question, provide that felons’ rights are not automatically restored. In Virginia, my state, the state constitution provides that that power rests with the Governor alone – not the legislature or the courts. I have no idea what the specifics are in Florida, but the bottom line is that it’s the will of the people of Florida that felons don’t vote in Florida elections unless some specific steps are taken first by the felon.
And more power to them. That’s a perfectly rational decision, as well as a perfectly legal one. Committing a felony has certain long-term consequences that continue even after the prison time has been served. In some states, loss of enfranchisement is one of those consequences. And I won’t shed one tear for the poor disenfranchised felon that has to wait on hold thirty-eight minutes to get an answer.
- Rick
Seems like I learn something every day that makes me even more proud to live in Washington.
To put it bluntly the will of the people in Florida is not necessarily sufficient to suck my dick. Once punishments are over, punishments are supposed to be over. It’s not even clear to me why its constitutional to take away a felon’s right to vote in the first place, but okay. But if it’s a punishment meted out, then due process should mean that it is specifically applied during sentancing with a specific time-limit. You can’t play stupid fucking games about letting someone out of prison when their time is up (oh, sorry, even though your two months are up, you can’t leave until you sign this paperwork and then wait seven months for filing and then pay this processing fee, and so on). So why can you with voting?
You forgot to quote the most important part: that this never would have been discovered if people hadn’t SUED to find out what the list was like this year. In other words, they were trying to sneak it in under the door.
Swish! Point nicely (and intentionally) swung at and missed.
Yeah, it’s their own fault. If they didn’t want to be incarcerated at a much higher rate than other people, they shouldn’t have been black.
Puh-leeze! Why make a racial issue of it? This thread isn’t about the ratio of black to non-black felons. It’s about* felons* and a governor who refuses to facilitate the return of their rights when their sentences are up. That said, I think that once people have “paid their debt” their rights as citizens should be restored automatically with their freedom. Not to do so continues punishing people who have already paid for their crimes.
Before Bricker reminds me that the law doesn’t return full citizenship automatically in Florida (or Virginia), I said only that I think it should. Just my humble opinion, Rick. This may not be the only thing on which we disagree. 
Because it IS a racial issue. To say that this is simply an issue of ex-cons having voting rights is naive and overly-simplistic. We all know about the infamous list of supposed felons who were scrubbed from the voter rolls in the 2000 election. Jeb and his cronies wanted to get rid of as many black voters as possible, because black people tend to vote Democrat. I might have given them the benefit of the doubt if they weren’t trying to do the same goddam thing they did to steal the 2000 election. I’m not making a racial issue out of it; it IS a racial issue. And to blithely dismiss the issue in its entirety by simply saying, “well those potential voters broke the law; they don’t deserve any better” is just wrong.
And as pointed out before, if these were potential Republican voters we were talking about, you know Jeb would be be handing them those applications on a fucking silver platter.
Man I hate doing this, but, cite?
If I shoot one of you with one of my guns, I’ll get some time as a felon if it wasn’t self-defense. If you live, I get out while you head to the polls. Would you be fine with me standing next to you? If all rights are restored upon parole, the 2nd Amendment is also in play. I get to vote and own a gun. Being a felon (which I’m not) I’d have the same rights as you at the polling place. Just because I raped/killed/molested a family member shouldn’t keep me from voting on which judge hands out the sentence, right? I mean, we shouldn’t allow majority rule of law-abiding citizens, right? Let everything go! No matter how big a piece of shit I am, my vote counts the same, right?
When felons have the same weight as me and my wife, whom spend our lives NOT breaking the law, I may listen. Untill then, I’ll assume we’re better for society. Untill someone can show me that we make life worse for the general public.
Does it really follow that because most folks in prison are from the lower economic rung that they would automatically vote democrat? Would they vote at all?
Is there any way to stats on that?
Your argument is so full of false assumptions it’s really hard to know where to begin.
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Not every felon is a violent felon, so not everybody who’s being denied the vote has committed rape/murder/molestation, much less of a family member
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You seem to be downplaying the actual prison sentence as punishment. Hey, these felons are going to be locked in a cage with a bunch of other felons for years. That’s real punishment – if it’s not enough for ya, why don’t you lobby for torture for prisoners? I think you’ll find some VERY sympathetic ears in the Bush administration.
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I’m sure you and your wife are nice people, but niceness and others such tests for voting eligibility have a VERY POOR history. It seems that SOME stinking, rotten unethical bastards will use ANY potential barrier to voting as a way of controlling who the voting population is, to their own political advantage. I’m sure you share my disdain for such tactics … don’t you?
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Being a huge piece of crap is not a problem for voting, and as our current administration demonstrates, it’s not even a barrier to becoming President.
So now we have nice felons. As opposed to those evil ones, right? There is a reason they were convicted of a felony. Or are there different levels of ex-felons in your world?
I know lots of nice ex-felons.
Maybe they weren’t so nice when they were current felons, but people can change.