Rick Scott Returns Florida to Reconstruction-Era Racist Voting Law

Wow!  Most of the idiots on here do not seem to understand the prison system or "felons". First off morons you can be a felon just because you drove on a suspended license, yes it's against the law but is it really so terrible that a person should go to prison for it?  While you retards are worried about felons voting let me tell you most felons don't give a damn about that anyway. You're talking about people who have spent a significant amount of time locked up, treated inhumanly, told what to do, how long they have to eat, etc...do you really think they give a crap about whether or not they can vote...really people! What people need to be concerned about in how poorly inmates are treated.  You take a human being and strip them of all humanity, dignity, self respect, you turn them into primitive cave men and expect them to come out into society and be productive civilized human beings....they are treated worse than animals for god sakes....if you took a dog and treated it like we treat our inmates there would be an uprising but we seem to think it's ok to treat human beings that way.  Yes they broke laws....yes some are extreme violent offenders...but not everyone in the prison system is a career criminal!  Everyone has broke a law or two....you ever gone a even a mph over the speed limit...you broke a law....you ever jay walked...you broke a law...you ever had one beer and drove home...you broke a law....you ever had a woman give you a blow job.....you broke a law (most states that is illegal by the way). So you perfect citizens out there need to get off your high horse and realize you are just as much a felon as most inmates are you just haven't got caught yet!  Have you ever wondered why most inmates go back to prison, could it be because society has made it almost impossible to be normal citizens again, they can't find "legal" jobs, they are now "tainted" members of society by you "perfect" citizens.  Once a felon has served his time...leave them alone...you don't know the circumstance of why they were there so mind your own damn business. You never know how or what you would do to protect, provide for your family so don't judge what you don't know or understand!  My bible says thou shall not judge....what does yours say?

Those poor CONVICTED Felons. cant wait till one moves in near you. Bad behavior isn't cured by reward. it's controlled by laws. More dimwitted progressive thinking.

Interesting move, given Scott is an unpunished felon.

This is some sick ish! Folks who bilk millions (Wall Street) from common folks go on to play and bilk again while folks who have paid their debt to society still must pay. Just remember when you don't vote, you really are voting against yourself!!!! SMH

There are countries where voting is mandatory for everyone and you are fined for not voting. This brings up the issue of many extremely uneducated citizens voting for whichever candidate the polls tell them to or whichever candidate gave them a free t-shirt.

As opposed to voting for someone because they believe in their process, promises and message. I am fine with this law, in fact, encourage it as not a race issue but an educated issue. If minors can't vote, then why should felons be allowed to. Under the same premise where minors are not responsible enough to vote, felons should not be allowed to vote until they prove themselves worthy. Sure, there are felons that were wrongly accused, maybe even bsed on racial prejudice, but that is too small a percentage to negate the fact that I wouldn't trust the decisions of a felon when choosing our leaders.

Rick Scott is exactly the wrong ***hole for Florida.

Seems to me that there is some latent racism seeping out here.

The legislation addresses the behavior of the individual and requires that felons apply to restore their voting rights (tell me if I'm wrong about that)The author isn't looking at the act of the individual, she is looking at the race of the individual. Does anyone else see that as a problem? Isn't that our goal, that we see people, and not race? I just don't get it. I don't get that thinking. I don't get the problem with felons losing rights. I'm pretty sure felons lose the right to own fire arms also, so where is the uproar about that?

Its just entrenched, toe-the-line thinking.

Polititions in any party are somewhat narrowminded in the cause for their own party. However, Rick Scott, notice how I didn't say governer Rick Scott, has gone too far by inacting this law. Racist or not, a convicted felon that has served time and carried out their sentence should have all of their basic rights restored. Thier punishment was the sentence, not losing their right to vote afterwards. What I like the most about this whole fiasco is that right-wing republicans claim that socialism leads to the abuse of power from the government, while they aprove of laws like this one that basically gives them a sort of authoritarian power.

If you break the law and you should be punished. Once your debt to society is paid then all rights should be restored. If you are on probation or out for good behavior then I think you should wait to have your rights restored. I think its a bunch of crap that somebody should restore your right "carefull." What an idiot?

Rick Scott is a felon, what is he doing preaching about felon laws.

It's too bad Rick Scott is even being discussed here since he is one of the biggest career criminals in history. I can't understand why people have to undergo a background check and here is Scott, also a felon, running the State of Florida. He needs to be removed now and not in 9 months or 12 months or 16 months. He will ruin the State of Florida. People please the petition now before he does more damage to the State and to the working peole of Florida. Scott resign.

The reason people don't show up to vote is the same reason why they collect unemployment or want federal benefits or want overpaid pensions and so much more... It is called being LAZY.

The reason someone commits a crime 90% of the time is because they are too LAZY to do the actual work to make money or go to school to become educated and find of good job. It does not matter if you are white, black, yellow or brown. Some people are LAZY and need to be taken care of, that is life. They do not want to work or go to school, it is easier to take from society rather than earn their keep in the world and go to work to do an honest job for an honest pay or to get an education to do so. Those who want to stop working early, still get paid and feel it is deserved fall into the same category, they too are LAZY. Imagine everyone in the USA had a pension similar to some of the Unions and Government agencies. There is no way the country would be able to maintain.

It is these same people who are LAZY that when it comes to have to vote are to LAZY to bother having to wait in line and actually place a vote (to difficult and time consuming to get in the car, drive to a voting station, wait in line, pull the curtain and touch a button). Hell, skip all that, they are too LAZY to even decide who is the better candidate before having to place the vote. Maybe it cuts into their TV time?

This is why America is falling apart and coincides with the lowest voter turnout of any democracy (someone commented that but I don't know if it is true). People are getting Lazier by the day. If someone can stay home, watch TV, play games or whatever they do and still get money, they figure why should I have to work. At the company I work for, a few years back I use to hear people tell each other, "never work more than you have to", "do just enough to get by", "don't do anything extra unless they pay you". Those are the same people now at home getting unemployment while my work load has been increased 20%. I seem to be the minority when it comes to understanding in this day and age; you have to work and be responsible for your life and not look for everyone else to take care of you. You get out of life what you put into your life and your society.

It is a sad state of affairs out there when there are so many politicians who support these people staying home, or crazy pensions, making excuses, blaming everyone or anything else. It is so frustrating by at least I know I am doing the right thing. I always work an extra 10% than what is required and now I am job safe, my family is safe, my home is safe, I have a future, I am building my own retirement, I sleep at night, feel good about myself, etc.. The part I don't like is having to pay extra taxes for those who choose to be LAZY.

Isn't Rick Scott a negro?

It's time to dust off our civil rights shoes and start protesting again!

Scott is nothing more than a criminal himself. He shouldn't have the right to vote. He pled the 5th amendment numerous times in that investigation into his activities with the Medicare/Medicaid fraud case! Take his vote away! Better still RECALL his butt for his criminal activities and associations!

He's going to be one of those felons one day.

wait...since when are you allowed to vote once you've been convicted as a felon at all?

It's just anti-democracy at work. But this state is huge and has huge problems in terms of fighting the democratic deficit. The main problem with the bill is it is classist. Most of these felonies (without looking, i'm just going to bet from national averages) are non violent drug offenses. So we have this huge drug war--which is first and foremost a subsidy to the major dealers. Virtually all of their cartel mark up comes from the drug war itself. So they not only redistribute the wealth upwards--but then they use the working class base to feed parts of the criminalization of the drug war, which is the prison system. That is why it's so important for the legal bureaucracy that is subordinated to the concentrated political and capital of the major dealers to keep so many inmates, and to make so many drug busts. That is why we have 25% of the world's prison population in the U.S. It's like any political routine that has ever existed in our history: It's machine politics. And you don't beat players in a machine, you either beat the machine and end it, or nothing changes.

I love the convoluted reasons that liberals come up for decisions republican government makes. It's really quite hilarious. All these layers upon layers of deceptive thinking pulled of thin air. And why the assumption that just because your an ex-felon and black means you're going to vote democrat? That's quite a stereotype you're pretty much failing to acknowledge in the midst of condemning Scott's law change as racist. Aren't you guys AGAINST stereotypes? Tell you what, when the Democratic party can become something more than a walking contradiction, maybe you won't have to cry foul so much on what the opposing party does.

Sign the petition to get rick scott out of office at “www.thepetitionsite.com/1/get-...

To "DO SOMETHING" about the egregious gluttony, be aware that House Joint Resolution 785 was recently introduced to establish "recall" of elected Florida officials. The legislature is controlled by repooplicants, so everyone needs to strongly push their reps to pass this essential tool to minimally fire the hooligan Florida governor. There is a link to the state website where you determine how to fire off an email and/or call the state reps, just google the keywords "contact florida state legislators". WISE UP AND DO IT!

This one little draconian measure is only the tip of the dirty iceberg. There are actually a number of other similarly slimey unethical measures that the repooplicants have concocted -- other than gerrymandering -- to reduce the number of eligible voters for other parties. Just one example, requiring difficult to obtain special ID cards for all of the potential Democratic-leaning electorate, such as the poor, minorities, young college students, like that... The repooplickers and teabuggers have degenerated into a "gun toting, white, racist" (per NPR) apparently pharmaceutically lobotomized mindless evilocracy, which they know will go the way of wooly mammoth, which is why they are now unconscionably stealing from the spending underclasses for themselves to be hoarded in offshore banks when America finally implodes due to the historically worst class inequality in history (in all prior incidences of this travesty, the nations imploded into financial ruin, revolt, and anarchy). DO SOMETHING NOW!

You forgot to mention that the DOJ..while Bush was still in office...investigated this and found nothing wrong.

In fact, a member of the Bush admin wrote on this

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

Sorry..you lose...

With the repubs in power all over this country, we are seeing more and more steps towards fascism.They are going out of their way to make sure that they cant be voted out of office. Not only is Scott doing this, but in Texas they are making sure only the elderly and gun owners can vote easily since they generally only vote repub.I hate to tell these guys not just repubs own guns. And a LOT of us are getting very angry. If they keep this move towards totalitarianism continue, the tea baggers may get the revolution they are calling for. But it wont be for their side.

With all due respect you obviously misconstrued my statement, and I happen to be a civil rights lawyer who has represented numerous black clients over the years (I'm not sure if they were African American, Caribbean American or Native American), so implying that I am a racist is a waste of your time. My point was not that black voters are by nature apathetic, but in our sill two party system, each party must energize their voter base if they have any hope of winning an election. In the last election, the Republicans beat the Democrats hands down at this game, even though the Dems have more registered voters in the state. The fact that black voters turned out in small numbers in the last election is pretty well documented, including on Bob Norman's blog. My point was not to criticize black voters, but to point out the hypocricy of the Dems taking some of their votes for granted, while doing nothing to encourage them to go to the polls. Although I disagree with most of the positions of both parties, one of their core functions for the past two hundred years has been to provide (mis)information to their voters in an effort to get them to go to the polls. To suggest otherwise is to ignore the facts and the history of our political system.

If you can explain how this factual observation could possibly be an insult to anyone who has fought and died for the right to vote, I'm all ears. Last time I checked, our country has one of the lowest voter turnout rates of any democracy on earth, so if we end up with assholes like Rick Scott who try to reimpose Black Codes, its because a large number of us were apathetic and waived our right to partickpate in their own government. I'm a registered Independent voter who is equally disillusioned by both parties (probably more by the Republicans since I consider myself liberal and progressive) but I have voted in every election since I turned 18 in 1984, even if it only for the lesser of two evils. Heck, I even voted for Jesse Jackson in my first Presidential election because I thought Regan and Mondale were both idiots.

At least we both agree that Scott is an idiot so that's a good start. Now let's recall him or throw him out of office the next time we have the opportunity!

The saddest part of all this is that we are here discussing how to preserve the rights of a bloc of voters who, had they turned out in any significant numbers, could have defeated Scott at the polls. Unfortunately, the Dems did nothing to excite or inspire the black voters, and, as a result, Alex Sink lost by the slimmest of margins. Sadly, the racism cuts both ways in Florida: the Republicans try to strip the rights of black felons while the Dems shamefuly take their votes for granted. If I was black I think I'd read the writing on the wall and move somewhere else rather than sit idly by while Scott and his Tea Party cohorts reimpose the Black Codes. I can't think of a better argument for a progressive liberal third party movement in this country. Workers of the world unite!

Thank you Tea Party. Thanks for the new state of misery.