Felons get new boost on vote (Florida)

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Thu, Jul. 15, 2004

Felons get new boost on vote

A state appellate court ruled that the Florida Department of Corrections needs to do more to help felons get their voting rights restored.

BY MARC CAPUTO
[email protected]


TALLAHASSEE - In another blow to Florida's lawsuit-plagued voting system, an appeals court ruled Wednesday that state prison officials must follow a law requiring them to provide felons with the necessary forms and assistance to get their voting rights restored.

The First District Court of Appeal said the Department of Corrections, despite putting in place a computerized tracking system to streamline the clemency process, has failed to provide some of the needed paperwork to 85 percent of felons who served their time.

Estimated cost for the assistance: $22.3 million to $34.7 million a year, to help between 25,000 and 40,000 people who might now actively start seeking clemency. Florida is one of only six states that do not automatically restore voting rights to felons after they complete their terms.

The annual processing cost is on top of the estimated $2 million price tag for a list of possible felons the state wanted local election supervisors to purge from voter rolls. The list was so flawed that the state scrapped it amid controversy last week.
(snip)

Howard Simon, Florida director of the American Civil Liberties Union, pointed out that President Bush made Texas an automatic restoration state when he was governor.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/9157472.htm
(Free registration required)

[Not Me]

1. The local paper (Orlando Sentinel) did a cover story yesterday on this...

particularly around the cost of the flawed system...yet no one--especially Jeb Bush or Glenda Hood will take responsibility or suffer the consequences of this gross fuckup.

[Sporadicus]

2. Why Not Restore Them Automatically?

Florida is one of a mere handful of states that don't restore the voting rights of felons automatically. Isn't that what the prison justice system is all about: rehabilitation? If a person has paid his/her debt to society, being released back into it, what if the big deal about restoring the person's voting rights?

[ClintonTyree]

4. Hey............

we're talking about Florida here, not a normal, rational state where the will of the people actually means something. I lived there for three years and finally last month moved back to NY, crappy weather and all, just to regain my sanity.
Florida is a bannana republic in so many ways. It's a land of illusion, like pretty contact paper on crappy particle board. Don't scratch to deeply or you'll find things you don't want to know about.
Don't ever expect anything in Florida to make sense until they rid themselves of the Republicans that control the entire political process down there.

[soup]

7. Gee, you should have stuck around for the refund and pity party.

That approximately $2,000,000.00 we paid to Accenture for the faulty purge list should get refunded now, right?

right?

At the very least, somebody's going to get fired over this, right?

right?

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"pretty contact paper on crappy particle board" - You do have a way with words. I like that - and it's so fitting. :hi:

[soup]

5. Glad you asked, Labor_Ready.

from the article:

>snip<
The governor has often said he believes that felons should not be allowed to vote without having to clear extra hurdles.

''I'm not going to, by edict, change the rules that are part of our Constitution,'' Bush said, complaining that the state has been sued so many times in recent weeks that ``I have to keep a card here because it's tough to keep up with them all.''
>snip<

jeb's response - It's part of the Constitution.

my response - because he's a devious, arrogant, lying piece of slime who couldn't care less.

The state's been sued so many times in recent weeks he has to keep a scorecard? Wouldn't that be just the slightest indication something is amiss in Wonderland?

alrighty then. got my blood boiling fairly early today.

[soup]

3. jeb implemented an 'automated computer process'

that he just doesn't get enough credit for. boofreakinhoo.

Cry us a river of polluted tears, jeb. Use the word 'or' so nobody can look at AND copy your purge list, then cite a law that reads 'shall assist' and 'other forms' so you can use it against the very people it was meant to 'help'?!

Why in hell is this piece of slime still in office? (no offense to slime) I cannot understand how anyone could vote for this devious scum.

>snip<
Bush, who had not read Wednesday's ruling, said the state would comply with it but wasn't sure ''how that jibes with the statute.'' He suggested that the judges had ''leeway'' in interpreting the statute's wording requiring the corrections department to help convicts with their clemency applications.

The words in question? ''Shall assist'' and ``other forms.''

The judges pointed out that the statute's definition of ''assist'' was ''ambiguous,'' but that it clearly requires the department to help inmates. Bush's electronic system wasn't enough, they said, because his department's attorneys acknowledged in court that 85 percent of felons are unaffected by the ''streamlined'' process, that they need ''other forms'' and that they don't get them.

The arguments by the state were so confusing to the appeals court that, at one point, a judge said it sounded like something out of Alice in Wonderland.
>snip<

on edit: my own emphases added in the article snip - except for Alice In Wonderland

[Mad As Hell]

6. I live in Maryland

Is it one of the six states? I have met two felons who have served their terms and are under the impression that they are barred from voting for life. I was also under that impression until recently. I suspect that many others are as well.

[soup]

8. Hi, Mad as Hell.

:hi:Love your screen name. (fits my mood this morning)

Here's what I could find on Maryland:


Fact of the Week:
No Taxation without Representation! On April 15th, nearly five million Americans who even after paying their taxes, will be denied the right to vote due to a felony conviction.

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Today, 4.7 million Americans cannot vote. Because of racial, ethnic, and economic disparities in the criminal justice system, the impact is most severe in communities of color: an estimated 13 percent of African American men are unable to vote because of a felony conviction. That’s seven times the national average.

But there’s reason to hope; thanks to extensive grassroots efforts, an increasing number of people with felony convictions are regaining their voting rights. Several states, including Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and New Mexico have reformed their voting policies. It’s clear that most people in the United States want a change: In a recent national survey, 80 percent of those polled supported the restoration of voting rights for people convicted of felonies who have completed their sentences.
http://www.righttovote.org/informed.asp?subsection=facts

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Laws such as Florida's -- which also exist in Alabama, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska and Virginia -- appear in less restrictive forms in seven other states, including Maryland, that ban only certain categories of ex-felons from voting. These laws are a vestige of a time when states sought to discourage blacks from voting, and they do, in fact, disproportionately disenfranchise African Americans. Eight percent of blacks in Maryland are deprived of the vote; in Virginia and Florida, a staggering 16 percent of the black population is disenfranchised.

Attempts in Maryland and Virginia to restore ex-felons' voting rights need much work. A Maryland law that was passed with great fanfare in 2002 and that was intended to automatically restore voting rights to more nonviolent ex-felons is proving ineffective.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48001-2004Jun16.html

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Before 2002, a person convicted of a felony was barred from being able to vote ever again. Now Maryland law allows a felon to vote following the completion of a sentence, unless they are a second-time offender, who must wait three years before they can be reinstated.
http://www.newsline.umd.edu/politics/specialreports/elections04/felonsvote021904.htm

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In 2002, Maryland repealed its ban on ex-felons who had committed two felonies, with an exception for those who had committed two violent felonies.
incredibly long Google cached link