Charlie Crist, Florida’s Republican governor, acknowledged as much last week when he persuaded a majority of his fellow state clemency board members to ease the way back to the voting booth for former felons. The plan—a reversal of the policies followed by Jeb Bush and other former Florida governors, going back to 1868—was touted as something of an Easter gift for Florida’s once-errant citizens.
“It is significant that we visit this issue during Holy Week, a week about forgiveness. A fundamental belief of both Passover and Easter is that the debt for a person’s wrongs can be paid in full. People can be forgiven by their Creator—the Creator who endowed each of us with certain unalienable rights—and we can do no less,” said Crist in a statement posted Friday on the governor’s official Web site. Crist also noted a practical reason for the new policy, which will allow certain ex-offenders convicted of less serious crimes to serve on a jury, hold public office and apply for an occupational license. “Giving a person a meaningful way to re-enter society, make a living and participate in our democracy will encourage good behavior and will help thousands of Floridians rescue their dignity,” asserted Crist.
The measure passed 3-1, with only Attorney General Bill McCollum voting against it. “We’re putting a lot of felons back into the voting booth, back into the jury room and back into your home, and I just think that’s a very terrible thing to do,” said McCollum.
In a report issued in 1998, Human Rights Watch observed that disenfranchisement laws were a relic of a time when certain civilizations—ancient Greece, Rome and medieval Europe—damned certain offenders to “civil death,” effectively barring them from participation in civil society. In the new world, observed Human Rights Watch, those laws had taken on an unfortunate racial connotation, as “a number of Southern states adopted them and other ostensibly race-neutral voting restrictions in an effort to exclude blacks from the vote.”
The report noted that nearly 4 million U.S. citizens were disenfranchised, including over 1 million who had fully completed their sentences. More recently, the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based nonprofit that studies incarceration trends, has put the number of disenfranchised due to felony convictions at over 5 million—including more than 13 percent of black men in America.
Florida is not alone in questioning whether such policies make sense. The Sentencing Project’s Kara Gotsch argues that the restoration of voting rights is ultimately in everyone’s best interest, since “people who vote are more likely to feel connected to their communities and to avoid falling back into crime.” Since 1997, she noted in an article posted in February, “16 states have taken steps to reform disenfranchisement laws, and more than 600,000 people have regained their voting rights.” The vast majority of states now have processes in place that allow ex-offenders to regain the right to vote. Florida was one of two states—the others are Virginia and Kentucky—that, with few exceptions, placed a lifetime ban on voting by convicted felons.
With over 2 million inmates behind bars on any given day, America has become the world leader in incarceration. Thoughtful people increasingly are coming to see that society must prepare for the time when those people leave prison—as the vast majority inevitably will. And it does not exactly take genius to conclude that everyone wins if they become productive citizens, as opposed to languishing in society’s shadow where they can only do harm—and not just to themselves.
