CITIZENS WITHOUT VOICES

The Ongoing Struggle for Felons' Voting Rights

*Anthony Lorenzo built himself a float.* The 30-year-old was coming
off a nearly three-year prison term for felony drug possession and
trafficking, and his new freedom had nurtured an appetite for politics
informed by spirituality. So when Ybor City's Guavaween revels rolled
around in 2003, Lorenzo thought he'd use the event for social commentary.

Dressed as a Drug Enforcement Agency officer standing beside slogans that
read "Drug War Ending America" and "My Doctor Agrees: Marijuana is
Medicine," Lorenzo was expecting hardy cheers from an audacious crowd. But
by night's end he had been arrested by Tampa police for distributing fliers
without a permit. Shortly after, the charges were dropped, yet the mere
scuffle with law enforcement was enough to delay the restoration of
Lorenzo's voting rights.

"I really wanted to vote," says the Sarasota resident, who remains
without voting power nearly two years after the Guavaween affair.
Meanwhile, he lobbies for issues like instant runoff voting and a
proposed amendment to the Florida constitution, which, if solidified
on the ballot and approved by voters, would automatically restore
voting rights for felons following the completion of their sentences.
Florida is currently one of only seven states to strip past convicted
felons of their voting rights.

"I want to vote in every election," says Lorenzo, who leads the
Coalition for Instant Runoff Voting in Florida. "I pay attention to
every level of government."

Since 1863, Florida residents with felony convictions have been denied
the right to vote or hold political office, unless those rights were
restored by the Board of Executive Clemency, which consists of the
governor and his appointed cabinet. For those who qualify for the
restoration - those with a clean record, and no pending charges - the
process can take up to two years. By running afoul of the law at
Guavaween, Lorenzo essentially erased the nearly three years he'd
spent waiting for clemency. Today, Lorenzo is among more than 500,000
Florida residents who lack voting rights because of a past felony conviction.

Over the last five years, the question of felon voting rights has
repeatedly surged into the public eye, most notably during the 2000
election when legitimate voters were turned away from the polls after
being wrongly listed as felons. Then in 2001, the state signed a $2.2
million contract with Accenture to create a statewide voter
registration list that could be used by counties to check the names of
felons prohibited from voting. Just before the 2004 election it was
discovered that Hispanic felons had been excluded from the felon data,
and Secretary of State Glenda Hood was forced to scrap the incomplete
list.

"This [issue of felons' rights] cuts across all lines," says Francine
Slack, secretary of the minority issues group within the Democratic
Women's Club of Manatee County. The club has planned an April 14
workshop in Palmetto to help ex-felons restore their clemency. "These
people are squeezed out of all sorts of opportunities. It's a question
of basic fairness. You served your time. You should not be
disenfranchised for life."

Audrey Bear, a former public defender and current criminal law
attorney, leads many of these workshops and sees them as essential to
helping both the felon and the community overall. Disenfranchised
citizens remain just that, and voting is key to a person's integration
and public involvement. "We do have our criminal people, but there are
others who have made mistakes in their life as well, and they should
be able to move forward and be productive."

Others agree. As reported by the /St. Petersburg Times/, the
18,000-member American Correctional Association - the most prominent
professional organization for members of the U.S. corrections industry
- - approved a resolution during its recent national convention in
support of full clemency for former felons. Republican State Senators
Steven Wise from Jacksonville and Senate Majority Leader Alex
Villalobos of Miami-Dade County have both urged Governor Jeb Bush to
move beyond his recent but limited efforts to expedite clemency, and
support an automatic restoration of voting rights. Secretary Hood has
dangled her own reforms through the newly created Bureau of
Registration Services, which she says would oversee many of these
voter-related concerns, although - as the omission of Hispanics from
the supposed felon list has shown - her track record has been less
than impressive.

Meanwhile, Lorenzo tries to move forward in life, despite the fact
that his former felon status also prevents him from retaining a
license in many facets of the medical and construction fields. But
he's completed his A.A. degree from Hillsborough Community College and
has sought a way to find what he calls a spiritually focused career
that parallels his activism. As a student at the East West College of
Natural Medicine in Sarasota, Lorenzo is now less than three years
away from becoming a licensed acupuncturist. He's also a newlywed.

All of this combined has improved the quality of his life, even though
some days he must struggle to remain optimistic. The political Lorenzo
gets quiet when he talks about the years of isolation in jail, and the
sudden immersion back into society. Voting matters, he says.

"When you kick people out with no support, no education, how do you
expect them not to return [to prison]?" he says.

/For more information on voting rights restoration workshops, call
941-778-3444./