I found an article whining about felons not being able to vote. It goes something like this:
Nearly 2 million adults in Florida and 16 other key election states are ineligible to vote because of laws that prevent felons from voting, according to a study released today.
OK, starts out fine.
The trend disproportionately affects African-Americans, according to Swing States: Crime, Prisons and the Future of the Nation, a report released by the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit research organization dedicated to ending society’s reliance on incarceration.
Well, why is that?
“Prisons are growing, education is suffering and the African-American community hit hardest is increasingly shut out of the debate,” said Vincent Schiraldi, executive director of the Justice Policy Institute and one of the report’s co-authors.
With this year’s presidential race expected to be as tightly contested as in 2000, political observers say a growing number of voters removed from voter rolls because of felony convictions could determine who will be president as well as the outcome of congressional and local races.
About 4.7 million adults nationally are unable to vote because they are convicted felons. African-Americans account for about one-third of such disenfranchised voters.
Well, now we’re getting somewhere. If my statistics recollection serves me well, I believe that the blacks comprise about 13% of the population in America, but they also comprise about 33% of the prison population. If you can’t do the time (and want to vote) don’t do the crime.
“In battleground states, it could be very important to Democrats,” said Sherry Bebich-Jaffe, a political scientist at the University of Southern California. “With an election so close, anything that can help your party is good. Sadly, a disproportionate number of felons are African-American and tend to vote Democratic.”
Wow, that’s too bad for the Democrats. Maybe they should encourage their base to quit committing felonies. I also like the “anything that can help your party is good“ line. Like registering felons to vote illegally? And illegal immigrants? Hey, she did say anything that can help your party, and far be it from the Democrats to let something like the law getting in the way of registering voters.
Florida overwhelmingly leads the nation in the number of felons who have not had their rights restored, according to the report. The numbers in the report were based on research by Northwestern sociologists, Christopher Uggen and Jeff Manza, who examined data from legal sources, election studies and inmate surveys.
Some suggest that Gov. Jeb Bush’s aggressiveness in purging voter rolls is a sign that Republicans don’t support restoration of felons’ rights because a majority of felons are Democrats.
“Many people say that is why Republicans are happy to have them disenfranchised,” said Eric Lotke, another author of the report. “There were a lot of claims after the 2000 election in Florida that there was a deliberate scrapping of the voter rolls.”
So now Jeb Bush is following the law by not allowing felons to vote without going through due process and he’s the bad guy? Again, if you want to vote in Florida, don’t commit a felony.
But Florida GOP spokesman Joseph Agostini said his party thinks “every eligible voter should be able to cast a ballot if they choose to do so and that every legal vote be counted.”
Agostini accused the Democrats of using “negative tactics” in trying to energize its base with the disenfranchised voter issue.
“Using anger and fear is quite sad,” he said. “It’s very insulting to assume felons are Democrats. You can’t assume how they would vote or that they will even register to vote.”
He’s got a point there. Also, if the majority of felons were thought to be Republicans, this story wouldn’t even exist, no one would care that black Republican voters who were felons weren’t being allowed to vote. Well, at least not the Democrats fueling the story and likely the media. This is just another sad attempt by Democrats who are still crying about the outcome of the last election. For the love of Pete, get over it, it’s less than 70 days until the next one.
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