In Florida, Felons [mostly Black] Want Voting Rights Back As Soon As They Complete Their Sentences

NPR

Thousands of petitions like these are circulating across Florida in an unprecedented grass-roots campaign to restore voting rights to the state's more than 1.6 million felons who have completed their sentences. This includes Grimes. At 17, she was sent to prison for a burglary. Although she has served her time, Florida law has barred her from participating in municipal and presidential elections for the past 41 years.

According to The Sentencing Project, a voting rights advocacy group, disenfranchisement laws have kept 6.1 million Americans from voting, and Florida is home to the largest concentration of them: 1.68 million, or 27 percent.

Florida's law permanently strips felons of the right to vote and other civil rights, including serving on a jury, running for public office and sitting for the state bar exam. Similar laws are on the books in Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia. The law requires that felons who have served their time and want their rights restored petition a clemency board consisting of the governor, the attorney general and two Cabinet members in a convoluted and subjective process that could take years.

Florida's law and its lengthy clemency process, born out of the Reconstruction era, have disproportionately kept African-Americans — many of whom have committed low-level offenses — disenfranchised for decades. Under Florida Gov. Rick Scott, 2,807 people have had their voting rights restored out of more than 29,611 cases the clemency board had reviewed as of Oct. 5. [MORE]