Florida's felons no nearer to voting The U.S. top court declines to hear a plea to restore the right. Tamara Lytle Washington Bureau Chief
November 15, 2005
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld Florida's system of denying voting rights to felons -- a practice condemned by civil-liberties groups for falling heavily on blacks and affecting more than 600,000 people even after their sentences were served.
The top court declined to hear Johnson v. Bush, leaving intact a lower-court ruling that Florida's system does not violate the U.S. Constitution or the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
"We have a good system that works," said Alia Faraj, spokeswoman for Gov. Jeb Bush. "Anybody who decides to commit a crime risks losing their civil rights."
But civil libertarians said the law affects blacks disproportionately and is one of the most restrictive in the nation.
"It's very disappointing the Supreme Court refused to hear the case of 613,000 citizens of Florida who have fully served their criminal sentences and are still denied their right to vote," said Catherine Weiss of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University and the lead attorney in the case. "Their stories are heartbreaking."
Felons who have no voting rights cannot get certain state professional licenses. And they are losing out on a basic democratic right, Weiss said.
Felons who are allowed to vote have lower rates of returning to jail because they are more connected to their communities, Weiss said.
The voting status of felons became one of many hot-button issues in the 2000 presidential election that was decided in Florida by 537 votes.
It arose again last year when Florida began purging people from the voter rolls whose rights already had been restored. Democrats complained bitterly because the list contained many blacks who tend to be Democratic voters but virtually no Hispanics, many of whom in Florida are Republicans.
That list was eventually tossed out. Faraj said the state is working on creating a new system of purging ineligible voters from the rolls.
Weiss said those who support Florida's restrictive rules are worried about how felons would cast their ballots. She said the Florida system also is a throwback to Reconstruction-era efforts to keep former slaves from voting.
But David Thompson of Cooper & Kirk, which represented the state, said neither partisanship nor race had anything to do with Florida's practice. Thompson said the original provision predates the Republican and Democratic parties and the freeing of slaves because it was part of Florida's territorial constitution in 1838 and has been adopted repeatedly since then.
"It's not on account of race. It's on account of a criminal's decision to commit a serious crime that they are disenfranchised," Thompson said.
Faraj said felons are allowed to apply to have their voting rights restored and that the governor has streamlined the process to make it easier. Although many felons convicted of serious crimes must go through a hearing and a vote by the governor and three Cabinet members, others who committed lesser crimes have their applications to restore civil rights made automatically and do not need a hearing.
Since 1999, 276,520 felons have had their applications processed, compared with 5,575 during the previous five years, Faraj said.
Of those 276,520, some are still in the pipeline, an unknown number have been turned down and 57,478 have had their voting rights restored.
But Courtenay Strickland of the Florida ACLU's Voting Rights Project said the process is backlogged -- with some felons having to wait for years. She has pushed for Florida to join the states that automatically restore voting rights to people once their debt to society is paid.
"It's time for our state to come into line with the rest of the nation," she said. "The right is too important to our democracy for that to be subject to the discretion of politicians."
Strickland said Florida civil libertarians will continue the fight. She said she will work to make it an issue in next year's gubernatorial campaign and will try to win a change to the state's constitution.
"Florida has to do the right thing and give people back their voting rights when they rejoin the community," Weiss said. -------------------------------------------------------------- Please Note: Due to Florida's very broad public records law, most written communications to or from College employees regarding College business are public records, available to the public and media upon request. Therefore, this e-mail communication may be subject to public disclosure.