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| Florida felons at heart of voters' rights movement |
| By The Orlando Sentinel |
| Published: 08/30/2004 |
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He used to live under a bridge, lying and stealing to pay his drug dealer. But after 22 years addicted to heroin and nearly 12 years in prison, Jimmy Klinakis is now operations director of a state-funded drug-treatment center, organizer of an annual Christmas toy drive and a regular invitee to Gov. Jeb Bush's drug summit. Yet, as Klinakis, 51, mingled with other guests at the pre-summit reception at the Governor's Mansion in May, he was among a few ex-cons who under the state constitution cannot vote for, or against, the person living there. "I don't get it," Klinakis said recently. "God has forgiven me. Why can't the state?" His question is at the core of a growing national movement targeting Civil War-era laws in a handful of states including Florida that forbid felons - especially those who have completed their sentences - from voting. And with the 2004 presidential election looming and the wounds from the 2000 squeaker still festering, the movement has been galvanized by Florida's attempts to scrub suspected felons from its voter rolls with two now famously flawed purge lists. The first list, used by some county elections supervisors, denied an unknown number of eligible Floridians their right to vote during the disputed 2000 election eventually decided by 537 votes. Earlier this year, Secretary of State Glenda Hood scrapped the second list because, even with the state's sizable Hispanic population, it contained only 61 Hispanic surnames. News reports also revealed that thousands of felons who had their voting rights restored appeared in the database. Florida is one of only seven states that permanently bars all felons who have completed their sentences from voting, unless they successfully apply to the governor and three-member Cabinet for restoration of their civil rights. Just how many Floridians are affected by the 136-year-old constitutional amendment, readopted in 1968, is a subject of debate. But estimates range from 400,000 to more than 600,000, a disproportionate number of whom are black. For now, most state elections supervisors are relying on local court records to remove felons from their voter rolls. It's a process that Orange County Supervisor Bill Cowles, president of the state's association of elections supervisors, concedes may allow felons who moved or were convicted in another county to vote in Tuesday's primary and the Nov. 2 presidential election. It's against this backdrop that civil-rights advocates here and throughout the nation argue that the bureaucratic difficulties and expense of enforcing felon voting bans - Florida spent nearly $2 million on the now-discarded 2004 list - are among a host of reasons for dispensing with felony-disenfranchisement laws altogether. After a get-tough-on-crime era that sent a disproportionate number of blacks to prison, they say such laws are archaic and discriminatory, diluting the voting power of black communities and impeding felons' re-entry into society. They also argue that, like Klinakis, who just filed his second application for restoration of civil rights, many felons are now taxpayers wrongfully denied a voice in their government. The American Correctional Association agrees. This January, the world's oldest and largest correctional trade organization plans to adopt a formal policy supporting automatic restoration of voting rights for felons who have finished their sentences - a position with which President George W. Bush apparently also concurs. In 1997, as governor of Texas, the president signed a bill eliminating a requirement that felons wait two years after completing their sentences to vote again. But in Florida, the president's brother, Gov. Jeb Bush, continues to enforce Florida's ban, saying he is bound by the state constitution. Critics, however, counter that he has a political motive: keeping presumed Democrats off the voting rolls so he can deliver a crucial swing state to the GOP in November. As the election looms, there is, however, one thing on which both sides agree: Floridians have the power to repeal Florida's felon-voting ban, and they may have the chance in 2006. That's when the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition - consisting of more than 40 civil-rights, social-justice, religious and grass-roots organizations - hopes to have the necessary 488,000-plus signatures to put the question on the ballot. |
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