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| Editorial: Ex-cons shouldn't have to beg |
| By pnj.com |
| Published: 07/06/2012 |
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Florida -- We urge Gov. Rick Scott and the Cabinet to loosen their stranglehold on the voting rights of nonviolent ex-felons who have served their time. There’s no better argument than the one by Walter McNeil, former Department of Corrections secretary. “By saying you have to wait five years, what you're saying is that person is going to have to crawl and scratch their way back into society,” McNeil told the News Service of Florida. “The research tells us … the more years you push that out, the less likely they are to succeed.” Last week, McNeil and Mark Schlakman, a Democratic candidate for Congress, asked Congress to get involved. The News Service of Florida reported they want Florida’s delegation to get behind a federal law that would allow for an automatic restoration of civil rights for federal elections. Scott’s policy is they should wait at least five years. Restoring voting rights wholesale is overreaching, and instead should be based on the severity of the crime. A new policy should first focus on nonviolent ex-cons. It seems fair that those serving time for violent felonies should have to wait longer to regain their rights. But it’s reasonable to allow some felons to be able to vote again once they have served their sentence. Supporters, News Service reporter Michael Peltier said, point to a 2011 study by the Florida Parole Commission that indicated the recidivism rate for felons who had their rights restored in 2009 and 2010 was about 11 percent. That compared with an overall three-year recidivism rate of more than 33 percent between 2001 and ’08. Scott clamping down on restoring rights was a marked shift from then-Gov. Charlie Crist who favored an automatic restoration of rights to felons who had served their sentence. According to the News Service, there are hundreds of thousand of ex-felons being deprived of their right to vote. Read More. |
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I guess it is alright for illegal immigrants to work and vote but am American former offender who pays taxes again should not own land or have representation so he does not have to go through legislative arbitrary manipulation again? Does the FORMER offender not have a right to kick the progressives out that used mob rule (democracy) to put him away? In a democracy it is mob rule alone. In a cannibal culture those that eat their family members will become king. What if the former offender did not eat enough people?
If you aren’t willing to follow the law yourself, then you can’t demand a role in making the law for everyone else, which is what you do when you vote. The right to vote can be restored to felons, but it should be done carefully, on a case-by-case basis after a person has shown that he or she has really turned over a new leaf, not automatically on the day someone walks out of prison. Read more about this issue on our website here [ http://www.ceousa.org/voting/voting-news/felon-voting/538-answering-the-challenges-to-felon-disenfranchisement ] and our congressional testimony here: [ http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/Clegg100316.pdf ]