Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/06/voting-while-black.html
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The only potential problem is that this gives Florida’s electorate a chance to turn a historical injustice into a living, much more explicitly racist injustice. Thank god that’s probably definitely not a possibility.
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Should include restoration of all rights, not just voting rights.
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It baffles me that such a law can even be considered constitutional. I mean, isn’t stripping someone of their right to vote cruel and unusual punishment? Even states like Louisiana and Alabama don’t prevent it.
(Iowa and Kentucky are the other two states that bar felons that have completed their sentences from voting).
Strangely, one of the guys leading it is a Republican convicted on corruption charges who found out he couldn’t vote after he moved to Florida. They’ll need to sway a significant number of Republican voters to pass it, so having that guy on board could help.
The law doesn’t go all the way - it still excludes people convicted of murder and sex offences, probably to make it more palatable.
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I am crossing all my fingers and toes for an extraordinarily high turnout of women and POC this cycle. If that’s the case, this should be a slam-dunk.
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“Farcical” is a good, useful word, but I would not put it together with “long prison term.”
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Preferably with a massive number of GOP voters staying at home, too.
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If a ban on voting by felons who have completed their sentence is in your constitution, you’re doing a constitution wrong. That sort of stuff is supposed to go into laws, not constitutions.
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Let’s hope. Despite polling and the daily “let’s listen to the trump voters and try to understand their point of view” articles seemingly indicating that there is a rock-solid base, I just don’t believe it. Sure, 10% will remain with him no matter what, but a lot of these “morality” voters really had to dig deep for the first vote. Now that all their worst fears have been brought to light (porn stars, FFS! Not judging, but jesus, that can’t sit well) I have a feeling a whole lot of them will just forget it’s Tuesday.
Snopes looked into that, btw:
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I mean I would think killing someone would be the ultimate cruel and unusual punishment but I guess if that’s fair game then what isn’t?
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I think that depends on the state’s constitution. Here in Texas, the constitution is ridiculously long and unwieldy apparently because that’s how we do law…
ETA Atho this change sounds like a good thing, isn’t Nov. a bit late for it?
I never understood why felon disenfranchisement was a fitting part of the punishment. Do we believe in paying your debt to society or not?
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the history of laws like this are filled with the rationale of keeping people of color from voting. in my lifetime, texas changed its laws so that felons can vote once they have served their complete sentence and/or successfully completed their probation or parole and/or paid all fines they owed from their sentencing.
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More recent laws (post-civil-war), sure I just presumed. But these laws predate that.
I just looked it up, there’s a longer history:
https://felonvoting.procon.org/view.timeline.php?timelineID=000016
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I want to respectfully point out an issue with this thinking, in that it implicates women and POC for the electoral failings of the Democratic party. “If only more black people voted” was a rally cry for many people after 2016 and I don’t think it is fair. The reason being that the Democratic Party hadn’t done much to earn those votes in the last 8 years, other than not being the Republicans. Rather, I’d like to see Democrats make a real commitment to addressing the issues those communities face and earn their votes. I know you don’t mean it this way, but the subtext is that women and POC will be letting the rest of us (i.e. White male progressives) down if they don’t vote.
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I read that. While he didn’t plan to return the dog to the shelter after the campaign, he still adopted a pet to boost his image and then abandoned it when he couldn’t handle the responsibility. IMO, given his extensive personal resources, that still says a lot about his character and willingness to use people for his own ends.
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I agree! I don’t think there’s anything in my comment throwing shade at those groups, but I do get that it’s a major way that women and POC are further marginalized. The Democrats will not get a pass from me until I see a generation of truly serving the underserved. Even if we got the most progressive president and congress ever out of them, I’d only believe the intent is pure if they maintain it for a long, long time.
Edited for clarity. I never noticed how close underserved and undeserved are.
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True, he didn’t adopt and return a dog for purely political reasons. What he did do was adopt a dog without doing enough due diligence to determine it was a good fit. It can happen to anyone, sometimes rescues have hard to find issues, but “can’t be around anyone carrying anything” seems like the kind of thing a good shelter would notice. And one that would come up when the family says to the shelter employees, “This dog is going to be living in the governor’s mansion, encountering lots of new people doing lots of different jobs on a regular basis. Do you think he’ll be able to handle that?”
I know, I know, “Expecting politicians to understand the obvious consequences before making a decision” is completely unrealistic.
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