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Why Rick Scott's not interested in making it easier to vote

Poor Gov. Rick Scott. So misunderstood. So unappreciated. So unfairly put upon.

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By
Daniel Ruth
, Tampa Bay Times Columnist, Tampa Bay Times

Poor Gov. Rick Scott. So misunderstood. So unappreciated. So unfairly put upon.

As he schleps across the state running for the U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Bill Nelson, Scott wants voters to know he is a champion of good government, a lonely centurion assaulting the barricades of cronyism, bureaucratic ineptitude and career politicians stuffing cash into their pockets.

Sure, Scott is also guilty of appointing loyal, unqualified folks to jobs in his own administration, and he has waged a demagogic campaign the envy of Huey Long. But you're not supposed to notice.

To displace Nelson, Scott needs people to vote for him. But they have to be the right people -- not too black, not too poor, not too young and certainly not too educated.

Think of Scott as a sort of Monty Python's knight who says "Ni!" Bring him a shrubbery, preferably white lilies.

Scott and the three elected members of the state Cabinet have done their best to make it almost impossible for anyone who has a felony conviction to have their voting rights restored.

Can't have that. After all, if you allow former felons to become active participants in our electoral system, they might actually vote -- for someone other than Scott. What possible good could come from enhancing that quaint notion of democracy?

During the single term of former Gov. Charlie Crist, 155,315 former felons had their voting rights reinstated. Crist, ever that naive fellow, simply thought it was the right thing to do.

You'll notice, even with all those felons on the voting rolls, the state did not descend into Deadwood. Republicans still control the Florida Legislature, the Cabinet and the Governor's Mansion.

But Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi, Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater and his successor Jimmy Petronis, haven't taken any chances. Over more than seven years, only 4,352 former felons have had their voting rights restored after jumping through more hoops than a Siegfried & Roy circus tiger.

At the same time, the Scott administration isn't too enthralled with the notion of making it easier for college students to cast a ballot, either. Efforts to allow students to vote early on their university campuses have been rebuffed.

During his time in the governor's office, Scott has worked assiduously to make it more difficult to vote. And somewhere the ghost of Juan Peron is smiling with an "Attaboy!"

As the Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau's Mary Ellen Klas has reported, the Republican-leaning Washington Economics Group of Coral Gables estimated not allowing felons to vote has cost the state $385 million in economic impact and the loss of about 3,500 new jobs. Let's get to work, but only if you've never made a mistake in your life.

Meanwhile, Scott has dredged up a nearly 50-year-old court case in which a Florida felon's challenge to the state's voting rights restoration process was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court.

But Florida was a vastly different -- and racist -- place a half-century ago. Does Rick Scott really want to hang his Navy baseball cap on opposing the expansion of voting rights to felons based on a vestige of the state's Jim Crow era?

Only 13 states (including Florida) do not offer felons some form of automatic restoration of their voting rights after serving their sentences and/or completing parole or probation or restitution requirements.

Scott and his little friends on the Cabinet can hide behind all the sclerotic legal opinions they want to deny felons who have completed their sentences the right to vote. But this is a political issue, not a legal one.

It is also a matter of simple fairness.

The disenfranchisement of felons disproportionately impacts African-Americans as well as working class citizens. They are people who got sideways with the law and subsequently paid their debt to society.

If we believe in forgiveness, if we believe in second chances and especially if we believe in justice, these people should be allowed to rejoin society with the right to vote.

And Scott needs to grasp that felons are constituents rather than an impediment to his political ambitions.

This November the citizenry will have a say on Amendment 4, which if passed would automatically restore voting rights to felons not convicted of murder or some sex crimes.

Scott had a chance to get out in front of an issue and lead. Instead, he valued partisan pandering over common decency.

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