PUSH GROWS TO LET EX-CONS VOTE AGAIN

Regaining Rights Is Easier Than It Was, Gov. Bush Says

MIAMI -- He used to live under a bridge, lying and stealing to pay his drug
dealer.

But after 22 years addicted to heroin and nearly 12 years in prison, Jimmy
Klinakis is now operations director of a state-funded drug-treatment
center, organizer of an annual Christmas toy drive and a regular invitee to
Gov. Jeb Bush's drug summit.

Yet, as Klinakis, 51, mingled with other guests at the pre-summit reception
at the Governor's Mansion in May, he was among a few ex-cons who under the
state constitution cannot vote for, or against, the person living there.

"I don't get it," Klinakis said recently. "God has forgiven me. Why can't
the state?"

His question is at the core of a growing national movement targeting Civil
War-era laws in a handful of states including Florida that forbid felons --
including those who have completed their sentences -- from voting. And with
the 2004 presidential election looming and the wounds from the 2000
squeaker still festering, the movement has been galvanized by Florida's
attempts to scrub suspected felons from its voter rolls with two now
famously flawed purge lists.

"This problem is as old as Jim Crow, as old as racial discrimination," said
Robin Templeton, executive director of the Right to Vote Campaign, a
national group formed 18 months ago to overturn felon disenfranchisement
laws. "But the ghost of the 2000 election still haunts us, and what's been
happening in Florida helps shine a light on a huge problem in our democracy."

The first list, used by some county elections supervisors, denied an
unknown number of eligible Floridians their right to vote during the
disputed 2000 election eventually decided by 537 votes.

Earlier this year, Secretary of State Glenda Hood scrapped the second list
because, even with the state's sizable Hispanic population, it contained
only 61 Hispanic surnames. News reports also revealed that thousands of
felons who had their voting rights restored appeared in the database.

Florida is one of only seven states that permanently bars all felons who
have completed their sentences from voting, unless they successfully apply
to Florida's governor and three-member Cabinet for restoration of their
civil rights. Just how many Floridians are affected by the 136-year-old
constitutional amendment, readopted in 1968, is a subject of debate. But
estimates range from 400,000 to more than 600,000, a disproportionate
number of whom are black.

For now, most state elections supervisors are relying on local court
records to remove felons from their voter rolls.

It's a process that Orange County Supervisor Bill Cowles, president of the
state's association of elections supervisors, concedes may allow felons who
moved or were convicted in another county to vote in Tuesday's primary and
the Nov. 2 presidential election.

It's against this backdrop that civil-rights advocates here and throughout
the nation argue that the bureaucratic difficulties and expense of
enforcing felon voting bans -- Florida spent nearly $2 million on the
now-discarded 2004 list -- are among a host of reasons for dispensing with
felony-disenfranchisement laws altogether.

After a get-tough-on-crime era that sent a disproportionate number of
blacks to prison, they say such laws are archaic and discriminatory,
diluting the voting power of black communities and impeding felons'
re-entry into society. They also argue that, like Klinakis, who just filed
his second application for restoration of civil rights, many felons are now
taxpayers wrongfully denied a voice in their government.

The American Correctional Association agrees. This January, the world's
oldest and largest correctional trade organization plans to adopt a formal
policy supporting automatic restoration of voting rights for felons who
have finished their sentences -- a position with which President Bush
apparently also concurs.

In 1997, as governor of Texas, the president signed a bill eliminating a
requirement that felons wait two years after completing their sentences to
vote again.

But in Florida, the president's brother continues to enforce Florida's ban,
saying he is bound by the state constitution. Critics, however, counter
that he has a political motive: keeping presumed Democrats off the voting
rolls so he can deliver a crucial swing state to the GOP in November.

"Why else spend so much money on a system that not only keeps people from
voting, but, perhaps more importantly, from getting decent-paying jobs?"
said Randy Berg of the Florida Justice Institute, noting that dozens of
occupations, including barbers and beauticians, require civil rights for a
state license. "The inescapable conclusion is that this is a calculated
effort by the governor to win the election for his brother."

Such charges "turn the governor's stomach," Bush spokesman Jacob DiPietre
said. He notes Bush has steadily streamlined the restoration process, which
grew increasingly more difficult under his Democratic predecessor, the late
Gov. Lawton Chiles.

During Chiles' eight years in office, the governor and Cabinet, sitting as
the executive clemency board, restored voting rights to 22,914 felons
without a hearing. In contrast, during Bush's first 6 1/2 years in office,
the clemency board has returned civil rights to 40,428 felons without a
hearing.

DiPietre credits the improvement to changes Bush initiated. For instance,
felons are no longer disqualified from seeking restoration of their civil
rights through the simplest process -- without a hearing -- if they have
more than two felonies on their record. Neither are they disqualified if
they still owe court costs, such as attorney fees.

Both disqualifiers were adopted during the Chiles administration, when
lawmakers and the clemency board were cracking down on crime.

As such, Bush argues that the current system is not only fairer but quicker.

But Berg notes that thousands of felons who regained their voting rights
since Bush took office did so only because black legislators successfully
sued the state Department of Corrections for failing to help inmates apply
for restoration upon their release.

What's more, Berg said, only 15 percent of the state's felons are eligible
to seek restoration without a hearing, relegating the overwhelming majority
to a process that takes years to maneuver.

Critics also note that under former Gov. Reubin Askew, the clemency board
adopted rules that automatically returned the right to vote to all felons
who completed their sentences. They say Gov. Bush could do the same tomorrow.

"With the stroke of a pen," said Courtenay Strickland, coordinator of the
Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

As the election looms, there is, however, one thing, on which both sides
agree: Floridians have the power to repeal Florida's felon-voting ban, and
they may have the chance in 2006.

That's when the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition -- consisting of more
than 40 civil-rights, social-justice, religious and grass-roots
organizations -- hopes to have the necessary 488,000-plus signatures to put
the question on the ballot.

In the meantime, Klinakis waits for the chance to show the clemency board
he's making amends for an earlier life misspent.

"You know what my biggest gripe is?" he said. "The state pays us to help
people become productive, to hold jobs, to pay taxes and, at the same time,
takes away their voice. It makes no sense."