WELCOME BACK, JIM CROW

Plan to Toughen Felons' Rights-Restoration Process Is Biased and Unfair

In record time, Florida's Cabinet brought us back to Jim Crow-era
laws Wednesday. Unanimously, the Cabinet undid a judicious measure
that had partially streamlined the voting-rights restoration process
for tens of thousands of felons convicted of nonviolent crimes.

The all-Republican Cabinet -- Gov. Rick Scott, Attorney General Pam
Bondi, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater and Agriculture
Commissioner Adam Putnam -- last month expressed support for Ms.
Bondi's proposal to repeal the voting-rights reforms instituted for
some felons in 2007. On Wednesday, at a rushed Cabinet meeting the
group of four made it official.

Now that the Cabinet, which also serves as the Clemency Board,
approved it, the state has returned to a cumbersome, mean-spirited,
prejudiced rights-restoration system that created years-long backlogs
in processing clemency applications. Reversing the reforms will
undermine felons' rehabilitation.

It seems odd, in particular, that Gov. Scott supported this proposal.
After all, he has emphasized the importance of rehabilitation to
reduce prison costs. Making a nonviolent felon who wants to turn his
life around jump through dozens of hoops and wait a long time to be
eligible to vote again is not an incentive to straighten out one's life.

Under the 2007 rules, nonviolent felons had been eligible to get
their rights restored without system-clogging applications and
hearings if they completed their sentences and paid restitution if
required. Violent criminals, sex offenders and others are still
required to wait many years before their requests are even considered.

The streamlining gave clemency to thousands of felons, who regained
their right to vote, serve on a jury and obtain some state
occupational licenses without a long review and hearing process.
There is no evidence that the 2007 reforms promoted crime in any way.

Now felons will have to wait five years after completing a sentence
to apply for rights restoration. This will return Florida to the Jim
Crow era, when such hurdles were created to prevent blacks from voting.

Make no mistake: This proposal has racial and partisan implications.

A disproportionate number of Florida's felons are African American,
and in this state, blacks overwhelmingly vote Democratic. The Cabinet
has further alienated black voters by adopting these more-stringent
restoration rules. What purpose does that serve the state or the
Republican Party?

In the last decade, more than 20 states have eased the restoration
process for people convicted of crimes. Florida should remain in this
group of enlightened states. Instead it has gone back a century. It
now has joined only two other states -- Kentucky and Virginia -- in
requiring waiting periods and hearings before felons can get their
rights restored.

If anything, the Cabinet should have considered more streamlining
measures for clemency. The Florida Parole Commission investigates
clemency applications, and it has always struggled with huge
backlogs. For a time the Corrections Department even loaned some
staffers to tackle the backlog.

Clemency application reviews still move at a snail's pace, delaying
justice for felons who have paid their debt to society. The
Commission recently told the Legislature that it has a growing
backlog of more than 100,000 cases.

Making felons who have served their time wait years to regain their
rights has nothing to do with being tough on crime. By embracing this
regressive proposal, the governor and Cabinet have sent Florida back
to a shameful time of blatant racial prejudice.