Pubdate: Wed, 25 Aug 2004
Source: Orlando Sentinel (FL)
Copyright: 2004 Orlando Sentinel
Contact:  http://www.orlandosentinel.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/325
Author: Maya Bell, Miami Bureau
Cited: Right to Vote Campaign http://www.righttovote.org/
Cited: American Correctional Association http://www.aca.org/
Cited: ACLU Voting Rights Project 
http://www.aclu.org/VotingRights/VotingRightsMain.cfm
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/disenfranchisement

PUSH GROWS TO LET EX-CONS VOTE AGAIN

Regaining Rights Is Easier Than It Was, Gov. Bush Says

MIAMI -- He used to live under a bridge, lying and stealing to pay his drug 
dealer.

But after 22 years addicted to heroin and nearly 12 years in prison, Jimmy 
Klinakis is now operations director of a state-funded drug-treatment 
center, organizer of an annual Christmas toy drive and a regular invitee to 
Gov. Jeb Bush's drug summit.

Yet, as Klinakis, 51, mingled with other guests at the pre-summit reception 
at the Governor's Mansion in May, he was among a few ex-cons who under the 
state constitution cannot vote for, or against, the person living there.

"I don't get it," Klinakis said recently. "God has forgiven me. Why can't 
the state?"

His question is at the core of a growing national movement targeting Civil 
War-era laws in a handful of states including Florida that forbid felons -- 
including those who have completed their sentences -- from voting. And with 
the 2004 presidential election looming and the wounds from the 2000 
squeaker still festering, the movement has been galvanized by Florida's 
attempts to scrub suspected felons from its voter rolls with two now 
famously flawed purge lists.

"This problem is as old as Jim Crow, as old as racial discrimination," said 
Robin Templeton, executive director of the Right to Vote Campaign, a 
national group formed 18 months ago to overturn felon disenfranchisement 
laws. "But the ghost of the 2000 election still haunts us, and what's been 
happening in Florida helps shine a light on a huge problem in our democracy."

The first list, used by some county elections supervisors, denied an 
unknown number of eligible Floridians their right to vote during the 
disputed 2000 election eventually decided by 537 votes.

Earlier this year, Secretary of State Glenda Hood scrapped the second list 
because, even with the state's sizable Hispanic population, it contained 
only 61 Hispanic surnames. News reports also revealed that thousands of 
felons who had their voting rights restored appeared in the database.

Florida is one of only seven states that permanently bars all felons who 
have completed their sentences from voting, unless they successfully apply 
to Florida's governor and three-member Cabinet for restoration of their 
civil rights. Just how many Floridians are affected by the 136-year-old 
constitutional amendment, readopted in 1968, is a subject of debate. But 
estimates range from 400,000 to more than 600,000, a disproportionate 
number of whom are black.

For now, most state elections supervisors are relying on local court 
records to remove felons from their voter rolls.

It's a process that Orange County Supervisor Bill Cowles, president of the 
state's association of elections supervisors, concedes may allow felons who 
moved or were convicted in another county to vote in Tuesday's primary and 
the Nov. 2 presidential election.

It's against this backdrop that civil-rights advocates here and throughout 
the nation argue that the bureaucratic difficulties and expense of 
enforcing felon voting bans -- Florida spent nearly $2 million on the 
now-discarded 2004 list -- are among a host of reasons for dispensing with 
felony-disenfranchisement laws altogether.

After a get-tough-on-crime era that sent a disproportionate number of 
blacks to prison, they say such laws are archaic and discriminatory, 
diluting the voting power of black communities and impeding felons' 
re-entry into society. They also argue that, like Klinakis, who just filed 
his second application for restoration of civil rights, many felons are now 
taxpayers wrongfully denied a voice in their government.

The American Correctional Association agrees. This January, the world's 
oldest and largest correctional trade organization plans to adopt a formal 
policy supporting automatic restoration of voting rights for felons who 
have finished their sentences -- a position with which President Bush 
apparently also concurs.

In 1997, as governor of Texas, the president signed a bill eliminating a 
requirement that felons wait two years after completing their sentences to 
vote again.

But in Florida, the president's brother continues to enforce Florida's ban, 
saying he is bound by the state constitution. Critics, however, counter 
that he has a political motive: keeping presumed Democrats off the voting 
rolls so he can deliver a crucial swing state to the GOP in November.

"Why else spend so much money on a system that not only keeps people from 
voting, but, perhaps more importantly, from getting decent-paying jobs?" 
said Randy Berg of the Florida Justice Institute, noting that dozens of 
occupations, including barbers and beauticians, require civil rights for a 
state license. "The inescapable conclusion is that this is a calculated 
effort by the governor to win the election for his brother."

Such charges "turn the governor's stomach," Bush spokesman Jacob DiPietre 
said. He notes Bush has steadily streamlined the restoration process, which 
grew increasingly more difficult under his Democratic predecessor, the late 
Gov. Lawton Chiles.

During Chiles' eight years in office, the governor and Cabinet, sitting as 
the executive clemency board, restored voting rights to 22,914 felons 
without a hearing. In contrast, during Bush's first 6 1/2 years in office, 
the clemency board has returned civil rights to 40,428 felons without a 
hearing.

DiPietre credits the improvement to changes Bush initiated. For instance, 
felons are no longer disqualified from seeking restoration of their civil 
rights through the simplest process -- without a hearing -- if they have 
more than two felonies on their record. Neither are they disqualified if 
they still owe court costs, such as attorney fees.

Both disqualifiers were adopted during the Chiles administration, when 
lawmakers and the clemency board were cracking down on crime.

As such, Bush argues that the current system is not only fairer but quicker.

But Berg notes that thousands of felons who regained their voting rights 
since Bush took office did so only because black legislators successfully 
sued the state Department of Corrections for failing to help inmates apply 
for restoration upon their release.

What's more, Berg said, only 15 percent of the state's felons are eligible 
to seek restoration without a hearing, relegating the overwhelming majority 
to a process that takes years to maneuver.

Critics also note that under former Gov. Reubin Askew, the clemency board 
adopted rules that automatically returned the right to vote to all felons 
who completed their sentences. They say Gov. Bush could do the same tomorrow.

"With the stroke of a pen," said Courtenay Strickland, coordinator of the 
Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

As the election looms, there is, however, one thing, on which both sides 
agree: Floridians have the power to repeal Florida's felon-voting ban, and 
they may have the chance in 2006.

That's when the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition -- consisting of more 
than 40 civil-rights, social-justice, religious and grass-roots 
organizations -- hopes to have the necessary 488,000-plus signatures to put 
the question on the ballot.

In the meantime, Klinakis waits for the chance to show the clemency board 
he's making amends for an earlier life misspent.

"You know what my biggest gripe is?" he said. "The state pays us to help 
people become productive, to hold jobs, to pay taxes and, at the same time, 
takes away their voice. It makes no sense." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake