STUDY FINDS CRIMINAL RECORDS KEEP 13% OF BLACK MEN FROM POLLS

Balloting: Florida leads the nation with 647,000 adults who aren't allowed
to vote.

Washington-About 1.4 million black men,13 percent of the nation's black
adult male population, have lost the right to vote-some permanently-because
they have criminal records, a study by Human Rights Watch has found.

The international organization, which monitors civil and human rights
issues around the world, found that overall, 3.9 million Americans - or one
in 50 adults - are temporarily or permanently disenfranchised because of a
felony conviction.

Florida leads the nation with 647,000 adults who can't vote because they
have a criminal record, including one out of every three black men in the
state.

The totals are high in Florida because it is one of 14 states that
permanently bar ex-offenders from voting.

The others are Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland,
Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming.

In addition, most states bar prisoners and those on parole or probation
from voting.

"No other democratic country in the world denies as many people - in
absolute or proportional terms - the right to vote because of felony
convictions," wrote co-authors Jamie Fellner of Human Rights Watch and Marc
Mauer of The Sentencing Project, a research group that opposes many
mandatory sentences.

For Rep. Carrie Meek, D-Fla., the study confirmed what she sees as a
troubling trend - the barriers for ex-offenders, even with one felony, to
rejoin society.

"I knew this was a problem, but one in three - that's so widespread," said
Meek, one of three blacks in the Florida delegation. "This is a terrible
thing and leads to many other problems. Voting rights are something we
fought and died for for years."

Human Rights Watch found a wide disparity in state laws on ex-offenders. A
convicted thief in most states, for example, automatically regains his
right to vote after release from prison. In Arizona and Maryland, someone
with two felonies can't vote. In Texas, voting rights are restored two
years after a sentence ends.

And in four states - Maine, Massachusetts, Utah and Vermont - prisoners can
vote.

According to the study, the United States "may have the world's most
restrictive disenfranchisement laws." A few democracies, such as Finland
and New Zealand, restrict ex-offenders' voting for several years after a
sentence is completed, but only U.S. state laws bar voting for life.

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski