More Than 1.5 Million Florida Voters Will Be Missing From Tuesday’s Primary

[KamaAina]

http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/03/14/3758332/florida-felon-disenfranchisement/

Sheena Meade is campaigning to be the youngest African-American woman to ever represent Central Florida in the state legislature, and her husband Desmond Meade couldn’t be prouder....

But Desmond, a lifelong Floridian, can’t vote for his own wife. That’s because he has a felony conviction from more than a decade ago.

He is one of more than 1.5 million people in Florida alone permanently barred from voting, running for office, or serving on a jury due to a criminal record. Today, nearly one in four African Americans in the state, like Meade, are disenfranchised by this policy....

Now, as the presidential primary descends upon his state, Meade is gathering signatures for a ballot initiative to amend the state constitution to allow Floridians convicted for non-violent crimes to automatically have their voting rights restored after completing their prison sentence, parole and probation. He and the other members of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition are more than two-thirds of the way toward gathering the roughly 68,000 signatures needed to force the state Supreme Court to consider putting the measure to Florida voters in 2018.

[LisaM]

1. I would love to see this issue bubbled up to the Supreme Court

I hate the state-by-state aspect of this, it allows conservative states to create a new prong of voter suppression.

[RockaFowler]

2. My husband is one of these people

He has a DUI conviction in 1996. We have petitioned the state since then to at least give him his voting privileges back, but nope. pRick Scott refused to hear us at all. Heck even Charlie Christ refused. Once they see that you are a Democrat, they kind of toss you aside (at least that's what it seems). My husband is white not African-American, though. It's not just a race issue. There are many poor people or those people in the middle who cannot get their rights restored no matter what. If we had a better Governor or Legislature we might be able to get things done in this state!!!

This state is so FUBAR that it makes my head spin sometimes.

[HockeyMom]

3. Rick Scott has disfranchised

WW2 Vets and a lot of people with Hispanic sounding names. Forget the 2008 Presidential race?

[Mr Dixon]

4. SMH

Jim Crow never died in FL

[Peace Patriot]

5. We can thank the Clintons' "Crime Bill" and their "war on drugs" for that!

Put all those 'super-predator' black men and boys in prison for ten years, for selling a few joints while being black, and deprive them of their voting rights for life. That is Clintonism. And it has destroyed lives, families, children and communities all over this land.

The other thing is: They put these state and private prisons out in sparsely populated white rural areas, far from their communities, and count the prisoners' bodies in the U.S. Census, to give the white folks more political representation than they merit, and more federal project dollars. The black bodies can't vote either place, at home or in prison, and their home community is further deprived of representation and tax dollars.

The Clintons have done some extraordinarily destructive things to our people and our country. They really should be expelled from the Democratic Party--yet here they are, trying to get back into the White House. I dread to think of what will happen if they succeed. I don't think they are capable of suddenly developing humanitarian ethics, or reforming in any way. They serve the uber rich. Period.