We've discussed the way felon voting list "purging" has been used as a republican "minimuze the vote" "Op", over on the politics thread, for at least four years...here's an excerpt from on of my old posts:
Consider that, in 2000, we were told that republicans, Bush-Cheney won the popular vote in the state of Florida by about 500 votes, over the rival democratic candidates, Gore-Leiberman. Bush-Cheney had "help", though:
...the flawed history of state of Florida felon "voter purge lists", from Oct., 2004. There is much more info at the link:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...0&postcount=55
....but here are excerpts of two main supporting points from the link, above:
Florida is one of six states that permanently strip voting rights to felons for life unless they petition to have them restored. One election-law expert who usually represents Democrats said the release of the list will rekindle the debate over disenfranchising voters. <a href="http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/02/State/Felon_voters_list_mad.shtml">http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/02/State/Felon_voters_list_mad.shtml</a>
Quote:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/12/felons/
Florida scraps list of suspected felons barred from voting
Monday, July 12, 2004 Posted: 3:59 PM EDT (1959 GMT)
(CNN) -- Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood has decided to scrap a list that was intended to keep more than 47,000 suspected felons from voting in November.
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush agreed with the decision, his spokesman said Monday.
"The list will not be used," said Jacob DiPietre, a spokesman for Bush, whose state proved key to his brother's victory four years ago.
Hood decided over the weekend to dump the list, which was created by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, after <h3>news stories pointed out that the list included only 61 Hispanic names, DiPietre said.
The state's large Cuban population tends to vote Republican.......</h3>
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Quote:
http://web.archive.org/web/200408111...db0e300e7.html
Jeb's defiance makes case for automatic clemency
Palm Beach Post Editorial
Thursday, July 29, 2004
Gov. Bush is attacking the judiciary with way more than the usual Republican rhetoric. This time, he's resorted to outright defiance.
The governor couldn't have picked a more revealing way to display his anti-court venom than by spurning the July 14 opinion of the 1st District Court of Appeal in Tallahassee. The court told the state that it must help felons fill out a form needed to win back the right to vote after serving prison time. Rather than follow the court's dictate, Gov. Bush eliminated the form.
That's the kind of inexcusable defiance that makes Florida the focal point for national anxiety over the upcoming presidential election. Secretary of State Glenda Hood, who was appointed by Gov. Bush and reports to him, already has gone too far in defending an indefensible list of nearly 48,000 ex-felons who may or may not have been banned from voting. Fueling the conspiracy theories that Ms. Hood says are groundless, nearly half the names on the list belonged to African-Americans, who tend to vote for Democrats. Fewer than 100 belonged to Hispanics, who vote more often for Republicans than blacks do. Both parties are making strong appeals to Hispanic voters.
More than 50,000 felons were released from Florida prisons last year. About 85 percent must apply to get clemency. A year ago, the court found that about 125,000 inmates who completed their terms between 1992 and 2001 -- out of as many as 700,000 -- had not been properly notified of their right to clemency. Gov. Bush can't call the appellate court's ruling judicial activism. The court didn't make the law; the state did. Here is the wording: "The authorized agent (of the state) shall assist the offender in completing these forms... before the offender is discharged from supervision." The court "interpreted" that to mean the state must "assist the offender."
The governor whined that the form duplicates electronic filing methods and did away with the form. But the governor's plan doesn't order the Department of Correction to help inmates file electronically before they are discharged. Instead, it promises only that the state will put a notice in the mail. Rather than help people as they are about to leave custody, the state proposes tracking these transient residents after they leave. Additionally, the state is finding flaws in its central voter database, which lists all Florida voters. The errors on that list compounded the difficulty of screening out felons.
The long-term solution is for Floridians to change the state constitution to automatically restore voting rights of felons. Florida is one of seven states, including Mississippi and Alabama, that do not grant automatic clemency. State legislators chose to offer voters an amendment requiring parental notice of abortions, not one that would lift the Civil War-era ban on voting rights. The ban makes Florida look racist and uninterested in democracy. The governor's actions make him appear to be complicit.
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