tom_thinks

Remember back in 2000 when George Bush somehow was determined to be the winner of the presidential election? Well we all know he couldn't have done it without a little help from his friends (5 0f 9 on the Supreme Court) or his little brother Jeb and his conspiring Secretary of State for Florida, Katherine Harris.
In Florida, convicted felons are denied the right to vote. This has traditionally been a great benefit to the Republican party because in other states, where felons can vote, they heavily favor Democrats. Enter Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris. They conceived of a plan to eliminate these felons from trying to vote in the 2000 election. They decided to purge the voter rolls. But to do this, they had to investigate and track down who these people were. They purposefully created a list that contained many thousands more names than there were convicted felons on the rolls. People with similar names to felons were purged. People who's voting rights had been restored in other states were purged. Coincidently, most of those purged were of African-American descent (majority voting Democrat). Thousands of people were wrongly denied their right to vote and George Bush is the President of the United States as a direct result. (For more background on this, check out Greg Palast's excellent site)
Now Florida is purging its rolls again. The state refuses to allow anyone but "government officials, candidates for office, and political parties" to see the new purge list. Fortunately some other people see how absurd this is and CNN is suing the state.

The state Monday denied a CNN request for a copy of the list of up to 48,000 people. These people, according to the state, could be ineligible to vote because they are felons or have multiple registrations -- or have died since the last election....
Florida's 2000 felon purge program resulted in over 50,000 legal voters being disenfranchised," said Leon County elections supervisor Ion Sancho in a written statement. "When asked for assurances that the [2004 felon list] was 90 percent accurate -- the minimum level local supervisors of elections requested for such a list -- we were told that it was better than the 2000 list, with no data to support its accuracy."

We cannot allow another election to be hijacked by Bush and his cronies. Hopefully this lawsuit will result in the release of the purge list, however this doesn't really address the central issue, a felon's right to vote. Why, after paying their debt to society, can a convicted felon not participate in democracy? Would they vote against tough crime laws or to legalize assault or robbery? What exactly are we afraid would happen? Or should we be asking, "What are those in power afraid of?"
Current reports indicate that 1 in 75 American males are currently in prison. With our prison population on the rise, an ever increasing number of people will be denied the right to vote under this archaic practice. Crimes as minor as simple possesion of prescription drugs without a prescription can result in a felony conviction.
Convicted felons are overwhelmingly of the lower class, a majority are racial minorities and precisely of the groups that are under-represented in government.
Going to prison can mean not only losing your freedom for a time, but being forever banned for life from participating in the decisions that will govern you and your children. That is not democracy, and that is not right.
If this country is to truly be a democracy, the right to vote must be restored to every felon after their time is served.