It’s Sunshine Week, but there’s no transparency in the Sunshine State.
Behind closed doors, Florida Gov. Rick Scott and his handpicked Clemency Board rescinded the automatic restoration of voting rights for tens hundreds of thousands of non-violent felons who have served their time.
Luther Campbell, formerly of 2 Live Crew, writes:
Last week, Florida Gov. Rick Scott ramrodded through a decision that explains why African-Americans have no faith in the criminal justice system or those who run it. On March 9, giving virtually no public notice or warning his own cabinet, the state's leader made it ungodly hard for ex-felons to vote. Ever. Even if they have reformed.
In a letter to Scott and the Clemency Board, civil rights organizations urged them not to turn back the clock:
It is well documented that Florida’s criminal disenfranchisement laws are a relic of a discriminatory past. Florida’s disenfranchisement law was enacted after the Civil War when the Fifteenth Amendment forced the state to enfranchise African‐American men. The voting ban was an attempt to weaken political power of African Americans, and it continues to have its intended effect today. The current law continues to exclude African Americans from the polls at more than twice the rate of other Florida citizens. Without counting those who are serving criminal sentences, 13% of the voting‐age African‐American population in Florida has lost the right to vote. Currently, nearly a quarter of those who are disenfranchised in Florida are African‐American.
Indeed, as documented in the film about the 2000 election debacle that I wrote and produced, “Counting on Democracy,” Florida’s ex-felon disenfranchisement law dates back to the Compromise of 1877, which effectively ended Reconstruction.
Florida state Sen. Tony Hill, an unsung hero of the 2000 election, says the move is “racism at its worst.”
For more info about ex-felon disenfranchisement, visit The Sentencing Project.
