Restoring voting rights to felons …

There’s a movement across the nation to restore voting rights to convicted felons. It’s framed as a civil rights issue. The claim is felons are unfairly being disenfranchised of a basic right.   

In all but a handful of the most liberal states, there’s little chance ordinary voters will vote to allow convicted felons to have their voting rights restored. So some proponents of restoring voting rights are doing an end-around to bypass voters.   

Virginia’s Democrat governor used an executive order in 2016 to restore voting rights to about 200,000 felons, about half of whom were African American – a core Democrat voting bloc. In the 2017 gubernatorial election in Virginia, the otherwise lackluster Democrat winner won by a bit more than 200,000 votes.

The executive-order route doesn’t always hold.  In Kentucky, a new Republican governor rescinded a similar order from his Democrat predecessor. 

In Florida, there will be a referendum on the ballot in November to amend the state’s constitution to restore voting rights to convicted felons. If passed by 60% of the voters it might affect as many as 1.5 million felons here. 

Knowing Florida, I don’t think passage is likely.

Perhaps like me you’ve been asked a number of times – usually by college-age people – to sign petitions supporting restoring voting rights to felons.  

I always decline. And when the vote comes up in November I will vote to oppose any measure that enables convicted felons here to vote. 

I’m not entirely heartless. One of my best friends is a felon; he did a particularly stupid thing, went to prison here, and served his time.  He didn’t commit a violent, sex, or drug-related crime, so he would be eligible to vote under the proposed Florida amendment.

As much as I love him like a brother, I can’t vote for the amendment. Sorry.

A felony is a felony. It’s a serious crime. One of the lasting penalties – and long-term disincentives to committing a felony – is that except under extraordinary circumstances a felony conviction follows you for the rest of your life. The threat of a felony conviction is one of the most powerful tools a prosecutor has; anything that diminishes the lasting impact of a potential felony conviction is a bad idea.   

The reality is that it typically takes quite a lot to be convicted of a felony, even here which has a well-deserved reputation for being tough on crime.  In most cases that don’t involve murder, attacks on police, or violent sexual assault, first-time offenders usually get a break – lesser charges with court-ordered community service, restitution and/or probation.

Florida is not alone in this; it’s the norm in most states. 

Capital crimes, grand larceny, and repeat offenders are treated much differently. Especially if you are an adult and commit a violent crime. Florida will throw the book at you. 

You may be a New Testament type of person at heart, but when it comes to violent crimes Florida’s an Old Testament legal system.  

For years Florida was one of the leaders in sending people to the electric chair, nicknamed “Old Sparky,” before it was retired.  As Florida native Dave Barry once wrote, Florida is a state where many people would be happy to see Old Sparky set on slow roast for some criminals. 

When Florida abandoned the electric chair for other perhaps more humane means of execution that was okay. But when the state supreme court ruled death-sentence convictions could be commuted to life without parole if the original jury verdict wasn’t unanimous, not everybody was happy.  Except, perhaps, death-row inmates. And their lawyers. 

This is still a mostly pro-death penalty state.  When a state’s attorney in Orlando announced she would no longer seek the death penalty in capital cases, the governor reassigned all her capital cases to other prosecutors who would. Most people here probably agreed with the governor. 

Florida residents as a whole aren’t all that forgiving. 

That’s why restoring rights to felons as a ballot issue here will probably fail.  Sure, it will probably pass in certain parts of the state – especially in Democrat-controlled cities and counties – because Democrats see allowing felons to vote as another way to change the electorate more to their favor.

It’s the reason why those same Democrats want to gain amnesty for illegals. More potential Democrat voters. That’s all they are seeking.    

Yet the potential for spiking the electorate is not the primary reason I am opposed to giving felons the right to vote. My opposition is more on principle: we can’t continue to change the rules to take away the consequences of bad decisions someone makes. 

That’s why I am also opposed to cities, like Philadelphia, that have outlawed potential employers asking job candidates if they have ever been convicted of a crime.  What are they thinking?

That it’s perfectly okay to commit a crime?

No, it’s not. Especially a felony. There must be consequences.