A new report from the Brennan Center for Justice takes Florida to task for its law denying voting rights to felons unless they successfully navigate an arduous and lengthy process to get those rights back. The Brennan Center calls Florida’s law “radically out of step with policies around the rest of the country” and “one of the harshest laws in the nation.” The law needs to be replaced,the report said. According to the report, released this month, 1.6 million Floridians are denied voting rights because of the state law. Those residents represent more than 10 percent of the state’s voting-age population. A disproportionate number, nearly one-third, are black. “Florida’s criminal disenfranchisement law is rooted in some of our country’s most discriminatory voting practices, and it continues to have its intended effects today,” said the report’s author, Erika Wood, a New York Law School professor and director of the Voting Rights and Civic Participation Project of the Impact Center for Public Interest Law. Read the full report
“It is time for Florida to learn from the past and then leave it behind. The right to vote should not be used as a tool for lifetime punishment,” Wood added.
In her report published by the Brennan Center, Wood wrote that “Florida has one of the most punishing and restrictive criminal disenfranchisement laws” and “denies the right to vote to more of its residents than any state.”
Her findings are consistent with other recent research that shows Florida is an outlier in its practice.
Full Article: Florida ‘radically out-of-step’ in denying felons right to vote, report says | Miami Herald.