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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday February 04 2018, @03:45AM   Printer-friendly
from the process-improvements dept.

U.S. District Judge Mark Walker has ruled that Florida's system for restoration of voting and other civil rights to convicted felons is unconstitutional. Florida is likely to appeal the ruling:

A federal judge has declared unconstitutional Florida's procedure for restoring voting rights to felons who have served their time. In a strongly worded ruling seen as a rebuke of Republican Gov. Rick Scott, who is the lead defendant in the case, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker said the disenfranchisement of felons who have served their time is "nonsensical" and a violation of the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Although nearly every state bars incarcerated criminals from voting, only Florida and three others — Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia — do not automatically restore voting rights at the completion of a criminal sentence.

Walker, an Obama administration appointee, decried the state's requirement that someone with a felony conviction must "kowtow" to a partisan panel, the Office of Executive Clemency, "over which Florida's governor has absolute veto authority" to regain their right to vote. "[Elected], partisan officials have extraordinary authority to grant or withhold the right to vote from hundreds of thousands of people without any constraints, guidelines, or standards," the judge said. [...] The judge cited one clemency hearing where Scott announced the panel "can do whatever we want" as evidence of its arbitrary nature.

Last month, Floridians for a Fair Democracy reached the signature threshold needed to get a constitutional amendment onto the 2018 ballot that would end the disenfranchisement of 1.5 million Floridians with past felony convictions.

Also at the Miami Herald and Orlando Sentinel:

Walker blasted Florida's process at length, writing that it makes felons "kowtow" to a board that can accept or deny their application for any reason. "A person convicted of a crime may have long ago exited the prison cell and completed probation. Her voting rights, however, remain locked in a dark crypt," Walker wrote. "Only the state has the key — but the state has swallowed it. Only when the state has digested and passed that key in the unforeseeable future, maybe in five years, maybe in 50, ... does the state, in an 'act of mercy' unlock the former felon's voting rights from its hiding place."


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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday February 04 2018, @08:47AM (2 children)

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Sunday February 04 2018, @08:47AM (#632851) Homepage Journal

    Kris, in Kansas, made a beautiful list. Which a lot of the states have been using. So I invited him to lead my Commission on Election Integrity, to make an even better list. And they tried very hard to make that list. By asking the states for their information. The Social Security Numbers, the names, where they live, what party they're in. And what felonies they did. A lot of that is public, anybody can get it. We didn't even ask who they voted for. I ask people all the time, who'd you vote for? And almost all of them voted for me. That's how I know there's a lot of voter fraud going on. But we have a lot of Dem states, they're obstructionists. They told us "no." Of course they did. They'll do anything to stop us from having integrity in our elections. And we could have sued, we could have gotten bogged down in a lot of lawsuits. Which we would win. But I said, let's do this a different way. So I turned it over to my DHS, to Kirstjen Nielsen. She's a looker. And she gets things done.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @10:07AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 04 2018, @10:07AM (#632870)

    Within a few days, about half of the Secretaries of State told Kobach to take his request and jam it up his ass sideways.

    Most of the others had already colluded with Kobach and they should be in prison for violating their oaths of office and for fraud.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 5, Troll) by Pslytely Psycho on Sunday February 04 2018, @11:34AM

    by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Sunday February 04 2018, @11:34AM (#632877)

    You channel the Creamsicle Charlatan so well (save that you're coherent and can spell) it's almost scary.
    Definitely my favorite poster.

    --
    Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.