And fellow Floridians bitch about the “Florida Man” jokes we get? No frigging wonder! Senator Clemens (D, Palm Beach) wants to introduce an amendment to be voted which would allow convicted murderers and child rapists to not only vote but to hold office!
Is the Democratic Party of Florida running out of possible candidates (and voters) without a criminal history that they are forced to dig into a pool of the worse of the worse for elections?
I am guessing that the good Senator is sad that Juan Carlos Chavez was executed for the rape and murder of Jimmy Ryce, otherwise with the name recognition, he would have been a good candidate to hold office for the Democrat party in Florida.
The “other than one involving a sexual offense or a homicide” in the last paragraph says to me they’re wanting to lie on the ballot to get this passed, with the ballot language completely opposite of what the legislation shows.
I notice they didn’t include the right to keep and bear arms among the civil rights to be restored upon completion of sentence. I’m not from Florida, but I do support restoration of all rights once all sentences are complete
I think you’re oversimplifying it.
The losing of a right is often *part* of the punishment for the crime. Their punishment isn’t necessarily done just because they got out of jail. For some crimes we add more, democratically, by law.
And why shouldn’t it be? Why should prison be the only way we’re allowed to punish someone? Why can’t we say “due process says you shouldn’t have this right for X amount of time, but we’re only gonna actually imprison you for 1 year”. Why should we be forced to put someone in prison for 50 years just to restrict a right for that 50 years? It absolutely should be doable that the law allows the amount of time in prison and the amount of time for restriction of a right to be different parts of the punishment under the law.
Disenfranchising anyone is a dangerous punishment. We need to be more careful about it.
In a democracy or democratic republic it creates second class citizens. One group gets to vote, the other doesn’t; which leads to the voting group getting to vote on the things that affect the non-voting group’s lives and they’ve no representation.
Hey, didn’t we fight a war over such?
Nobody ever suggests that since they cannot vote, they don’t have to pay taxes because they’re unrepresented in congress, do they?
I like to divide criminality into two camps. Safe to be among us, and unsafe.
If they’re safe to be among us, then they’re safe to vote, safe to own a gun, safe to live anonymously anywhere they want (even next to a school yard).
If you cannot trust them to vote, own a gun or be around kids then they’re unsafe and we keep them locked away.