The “F” Words

Ezekiel Edwards

The “F” Words

For many years, three "F" words have always created a cacophonous chorus: Florida, felons, and franchise (as it relates to voting rights).

That was until last week, when Florida Governor Charlie Crist convinced its clemency board to permit most felons to become re-enfranchised after their release from prison. Crist said the time was ripe for Florida to "leave the 'offensive minority' of states that uniformly deny ex-offenders" their voting rights. Indeed, at the time of our last presidential election, 9% of Floridians of voting age were disenfranchised.

This is a significant step for Florida - home to 950,000 disenfranchised ex-offenders - and hopefully will set an example for other states with vindictive voting laws.

Disenfranchisement of ex-prisoners is no meaningless matter (see my previous posts "The Ever Elusive Right to Vote", "Prohibited from Participating in the Politicial Process", and "Give Back the Right to Vote"). At the time of the 2004 election, 5.3 million people with felony convictions were barred from the voting booths, while another 600,000 were denied the right while in jail awaiting trial. Southerners with felonies were hit hardest, with 7% of voters in Alabama, Mississippi, and Virginia prohibited from the polls.

In other words, almost 6 million otherwise eligible American voters nationwide had not even the slightest say in the political process during our last picking of the president.

In a recent book by Jeff Manza and Christopher Uggen titled "Locked Out", and reviewed by Jason DeParle in the New York Review of Books, they explain the impact of such unnecessary voter exclusion in this way: around 35% of disenfranchised felons would vote in a presidential election (compared to our embarrassing national rate of 52%); felons vote Democrat 70 to 85% of the time; had disenfranchised felons been allowed to vote in 2000, Al Gore's popular vote margin would have doubled to one million, and Gore would have won Florida by 30,000, and hence become the 43rd President instead of George W. Bush.

Beyond Bush, Manza and Uggen identify seven sitting Senators whose electoral victories have been made possible by preventing their states' prisoners from casting a ballot (six from southern states and one from Texas), four of whom would have lost even if only ex-felons had voted. As DeParle writes:

"A fuller enfranchisement might have shifted some years of partisan control to the Democrats. ... Consider just one result of Senate legislation - the upward distribution of wealth through the Bush-era tax cuts - and one sees anew how mass incarceration abets inequality."

Under Florida's new rules, instead of having to undergo a cumbersome review, drawn-out wait, perhaps an investigation and hearing, ex-convicts who committed nonviolent crimes (consisting of around 80% of the inmate population) will have their voting rights restored so long as no outstanding victim restitution remains and they have no pending criminal charges.

This does not mean everything is suddenly sunny for ex-offenders in the Orange State; those who are already out of prison must come forward and claim their right (easier said than done), and as we know from 2000, simply having the right does not necessarily translate into being able to exercise it.

Even so, on this specific issue, Crist should be heralded for finally harmonizing the three "F" words of "Florida, felons, and franchise." Could "Virginia, villains, and voting" be next?

Comments

Republican Election Fraud new

From: OpEdNews

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_press_re_070408__22commander__n_thief_22.htm

April 8, 2007

"Commander 'N Thief"- Explosive new documentary presents evidence of fraud in 2004 election

By Press Release

Explosive New Documentary Presents Evidence of Fraud in 2004 Ohio Presidential Election

Investigative journalist Greg Palast, author of the current best-selling Armed Madhouse and of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, introduces the documentary and also provides staggering information in the body of the film about the RNC's purposeful and targeted strategies for disenfranchising millions of minority voters across the United States, including African-American soldiers serving in Iraq.

Others appearing include Congressman John Conyers, Jr.; attorneys Cliff Arnebeck, John Bonifaz, Robert Fitrakis, Joseph Geller, Peter Peckarsky and Susan Truitt; President/CEO of Common Cause Chellie Pingree; computer science expert Professor Avi Rubin of Johns Hopkins and Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D., the leading public-advocacy investigator of voting fraud in the 2004 Ohio presidential election; statistical expert Professor Steven Freeman, Ph.D. of the University of Pennsylvania; consumer advocate against electronic voting Bev Harris; Franklin County, Ohio Director of Elections Matthew Damschroeder; and Ohio poll workers, concerned citizens, and community activists.

In addition to the RNC's nationwide campaign to disenfranchise American citizens from targeted minority groups, several other clearly fraudulent activities are identified: 3,600,780 votes were cast for president but never counted; in Ohio, forensic evidence has been uncovered of ballot switching in selected rural precincts and of double punched ballots used to invalidate legitimate votes in specific urban precincts; and there is strong statistical evidence that as many as five million votes nationally were shifted, subtracting five million votes from Kerry and adding five million votes to Bush to produce a swing of up to ten million votes in the officially reported result.

The outcome of this series of sickening schemes is that the wrong candidate was sworn in as President of the United States. The evidence presented in this documentary, "Commander 'N Thief," should be seen as a warning that our democracy is now in peril and that ordinary citizens must act quickly and forcefully to restore honesty, transparency and verifiability to the American electoral system.

The documentary also cites the absence of any comprehensive or sustained media investigation or coverage of the evidence of serious election-day problems and, with the notable exceptions of Greg Palast (BBC, Guardian/Observer) and Keith Olbermann (MSNBC), there has been no significant attention paid to this unsettling story in the national media.

Former U.S. Senator, Ambassador and 1972 presidential candidate George McGovern provides a powerful closing statement for the documentary pointing to the need for citizen action to insure a transparent, accessible, easy-to-use and entirely verifiable voting system that will protect and preserve our democracy over the long future.

http://www.commander-n-thief.com/