Florida to let felons vote
April 10, 2007
Bravo to Florida governor Charlie Crist for persuading his state's clemency board to let most felons regain their voting rights after they get out of jail:
Florida has as many as 950,000 disenfranchised ex-offenders -- far more than any other state -- the vast majority black. Other states have repealed or scaled back similar bans in recent years, but roughly five million felons remain barred from the polls nationwide.
The ban, added to Florida's Constitution in 1868, has been the subject of especially bitter debate since the 2000 presidential election. Some legal voters were removed from the state's rolls that year after being misidentified as felons, adding to the drama of a recount that gave George W. Bush a razor-thin margin of victory over Al Gore.
Only two other states...
