Well, I agree with you, Bricker, no surprise there.
But I do think that politically this was a hot potato that should have been passed up. Jeb Bush doing anything concerning felons voting priviliges is going to bring up the spectre of 2000 again.
Indeed. If you don’t mind a quick thought experiment in this regard… The news story that prompted this was, in essence, “Jeb eliminates current form-based reinfranchisement process and replaces with phone-based system.” The response was a rather negative “He’s trying to stop them from becoming registered to vote.”
Now, if the news story was “Jeb eliminates current phone-based reinfranchisement process and replaces with form-based system.” would all of you applaud his progressive stance? Personally, I doubt it, I think the response would be:
He’s taking away a very convenient phone based system, where the ex-con need only make a single phone call to start the process, and replacing it with a cumbersome, confusing and slower mail-based system. Not to mention the trouble an illiterate person would have with forms. Not to mention that they probably will send the forms back time and time again because they’re filled out “improperly”. At least with the phone system, the ex-con could talk to a real person and get answers! This is nothing more than a transparent attempt to slow down the reinfranchisement process.
IMHO, there is nothing inherently wrong with the new phone-based system. It is not necessarily any better or worse than a form/mail based system. Any evil motives here are distinctly in the eye of the beholder.
I agree that it’s a political hot potato.
But I don’t agree that the proper response is for Mr. Bush to eschew doing his duty: to faithfully execute the laws of Florida. In fact, if he decided NOT to execute the law to the best of his ability because of his perception that it would create political backlash, he should resign in favor of someone that could faithfully execute the laws of Florida unburdened by such constraints.
- Rick
Cheesesteak, you’re leaving out several very important points that have been made over and over in this thread:
-
Jeb did this in contravention of a court order.
-
Several posters have explained how this would have the effect of making it more difficult for ex-felons to get registered.
-
Jeb is no longer entitled to the benefit of the doubt, since we already saw that he allowed a private company to improperly scrub black voters from the rolls in 2000 AND had a member of HIS BROTHER’S campaign committee as the person responsible for certifying the vote that ended up putting his brother in office. You would expect us to believe that his motivation is all of a sudden benevolent, but his past behavior indicates the opposite.
If the ONLY fact were that Jeb replaced the paper system with the phone system, and these other facts didn’t exist, then yes, I wouldn’t think much of it. But that’s not the case.
Mr. Bush claims that this step is actually in compliance with the court order.
- Rick
I don’t think I agree that the ex post factor prohibition necessarily applies to the example given by Andros_X. If the voters want to round up the ex-felons and have them shot not as a punishment for past crimes but as a guarantee against future crimes, then all they’re doing is discriminating against ex-felons as a class. And since ex-felons aren’t a suspect class… I’ll turn the hyperbole of the example down a notch: passing a referendum that all felons must be sterilized is, in all likelihood, completely constitutional. Same with, say, deciding that the minimum wage for redheads should be $3/hour less than for everyone else. There are grave problems, in a representative republic, with the existence of what amount to permanently disenfranchised minority groups.
"Our government cannot fairly be said to be ‘malfunctioning’ simply because it sometimes generates outcomes with which we disagree, however strongly. . . . In a representative democracy value determinations are to be made by our elected representatives, and if in fact most of us disapprove we can vote them out of office. Malfunction occurs when the process is undeserving of trust, when (1) the ins are choking off the channels of political change to ensure that they will stay in and the outs will stay out, or (2) though no one is actually denied a voice or a vote, representatives beholden to an effective majority are systematically disadvantaging some minority out of a simple hostility or a prejudiced refusal to recognize commonalities of interest, and thereby denying that minority the protection afforded other groups by a representative system.”
–John Hart Ely, Democracy and Distrust, p. 103
Every article I have read on the subject says that the court ordered him to provide the paper applications. He may claim it’s in compliance, but it doesn’t sound like it. I’m not sure if the actual ruling is available to view online. That would definitively answer the question.
Why should the government bend over backwards? Because these people have a right to vote. And the government should bend over backwards, do a song and dance, and perform card tricks if that’s what it takes to ensure no citizen is being denied a single right he or she is entitled to. Rights should never be forfeited for the convenience of the government.
No, Little Nemo. They do NOT, in fact, have the right to vote. They lost that right when they were convicted of a felony.
Since Bricker talked about #1, I’ll skip it.
and some can explain that making a single telephone call is easier than filling out a form and sending it through the mail. See? Jeb Bush is the inmate’s friend!
You know what? We all realize that the Bush family will never, ever, not even once, get the ‘benefit of the doubt’ from a rather large and rather easily defined group of posters. Honestly, it really undermines any argument you fellas put out there, since it’s obvious that any thought put into it is intended to find the most negative spin on the topic rather than to just consider the facts at hand.
You’re missing the point. The government is required by law to assist those people in restoring their right to vote.
Yeah, strange as it may seem, Little Nemo, there’s no constitutional right to vote. (Even though the Supreme Court, in certain cases - Baker v. Carr and Reynolds v. Sims come to mind - has acted very nearly as if such a right exists, without quite hanging their hat on it. See Lucas Powe, The Warren Court and American Politics)
But Bricker was wrong, and I explained why. So I take it you’re conceding the point?
Yes, IF you give him the benefit of the doubt, which I explained I am not willing to do. All Jeb had to do was comply with the court order, and there would have been no problem. But instead, he chose to do an end-run around it. You would have us believe that he did so because, all of a sudden, for no particular reason, he is now the champion of disenfranchised ex-felons. I call bullshit.
No, that’s a complete mischaracterization of what I said. I provided evidence for what Jeb Bush did in the 2000 election. My reluctance to give him the benefit of the doubt is based on known past behavior, yet you are characterizing it as simple partisan bias, which it is not. Quite disingenous on your part. He lost the benefit of the doubt when he pulled his dirty tricks in 2000.
Cite? Specifically, I’m looking for a cite that says that Mr. Bush’s current initiative is violative of the law.
Here’s the text of the ruling.
The law whose compliance was being argued was Section 944.293 of the Florida Statutes (emphasis in source):
So, not only are the ex-felons supposed to receive the requisite forms, but they are supposed to receive assistance, if they desire, with filling them out and submitting them to the Governor, all before they leave prison.
The prison officials weren’t giving them the forms, let alone help with completing them. This was the reason for the suit:
So the court reversed the decision of the inferior court and required compliance with the law of the Florida DOC. The court did indeed rule that the Florida DOC was required to provide the paper applications, since it was necessary for the restoration of the voter’s rights.
Bush is trying to duck the ruling by implementing this phone system; thus, it is illegal.
Not at all.
Mr. Bush’s decision eliminates the need for any forms. The “…necessary application and other forms required for the restoration of civil rights…” now don’t exist, having been replaced by the phone application system.
The court doesn’t order that the system use paper forms – if the system does, then the court orders that they all be made available. But if there are no forms, then the administration plainly is not violating the court’s order.
well, no, but I think he’s doing a fine job defending that point.
Actually, I would NOT have you believe that, I was being a bit hyperbolic. I was merely pointing out that just because one person states an opinion (pro or con) doesn’t make it fact. I personally think he’s trying to comply with the court order in a way that is cost effective, thus the phone system. I don’t think he’s anyone’s champion, and I don’t think he’s cynically trying to prevent these people from getting registered.
I’m sure you have a very good reason to think the way you do, but it doesn’t change the way you (and many other people here) think about the Bushes. What it boils down to, and what is SO damn tiring about these rants is this.
Regardless of what that something is, the anti-Bush crowd hunts around for the evillest, most vile possible reason behind the action, and claims that’s exactly why he did it. They latch on to the negatives like a pit bull and proclaim it as proof.
I still submit that if Jeb had eliminated a phone system and replaced it with a form system, you’d be here slamming his ass just the same, because you don’t give him the benefit of the doubt that he might not do something evil. It’s this thought that forces me to consider the anti argument with a HUGE grain of salt.
OK. Let’s put aside, for the moment, the fact that this appears like Jeb Bush is trying to dodge a court order with this.
It’s 3 months before the election, and he’s making a change that will affect thousands of people. The government now needs to provide a call center, staffed with enough people to handle scores of calls at once. They need to provide all the internal paperwork necessary to schedule hearings, as well as some people to process all of it.
This is a bad idea 3 months before the election, no matter who’s doing it. Especially since they need to form procedures for everything, train new people, and set up a well-supplied call center very quickly. People will make mistakes with handling the ex-felons and setting up their hearing dates. Internal papers will get misfiled. Call handlers will encounter special situations that they aren’t trained for, and screw up. Equipment might break. And this is supposed to improve the efficiency of handling ex-felons? I don’t think so.
I honestly don’t think this is about streamlining the process for felons. It’s designed so that 1)Bush doesn’t get caught disobeying a court order and 2)felons don’t get their hearing in time for the election. It’s important to realize that the reason Jeb Bush is getting his ass slammed is that he’s manipulated the electoral process before, and now he’s monkeying with it again 3 months before the election, after a court order requiring him to do something that would gain the Democrats a lot of votes, which is not a good thing when your brother’s the President, and he’s counting on you to deliver Florida.
So, Jeb Bush has the motivation, the means, and the opportunity to disenfranchise thousands of Democrats, and he’s been caught at it before. Now we see himtrying to do it again. Suspicion and distrust of his actions are not uncalled for.
Or, you were wrong.
If it had been 3 months after the election, people would be screaming “He’s trying to screw up the next election!!!” In fact, the timing makes the change irrelevant with respect to this election, which has been pointed out several times.
People fuck up. Shit happens. It’s not a vast conspiricy. Calm down.
:sigh: It’s too late to affect this election. Rinse and repeat. And like Cheesesteak said, if it were the other way around you’d be screaming even louder.
Or, your summer tinfoil hat is getting tattered and you need a new one.
I think we need to add a new category of rhetorical fallacies – misuse of “tinfoil hat.”
Jeb Bush is such an obvious skunk in the Florida woodpile that BruceDaddy might as well be spouting gibberish here. Oh, wait … he is.