EDITORIAL: Let Florida’s ex-cons vote: The swing state needs to give felons who’ve done their time the right to cast ballots again

Jan. 29--Thanks to a referendum that just got on November's ballot, the state of Florida has a historic opportunity to take a sizable moral step forward, one that will strengthen its and America's democratic values.

The people of the nation's third-most-populous state (dammit, they just nudged New York out) must decide to restore voting rights to an estimated 1.5 million felons, 10% of the state's adult citizens, currently denied the franchise.

In 1868, Florida's Constitution codified a terrible practice, barring anyone who'd ever been convicted of a felony from registering their preferences at the ballot box for the rest of their lives.

The date is no coincidence; it was one of many post-Civil-War steps taken by Southern states to enable whites to retain their hold on political power.

Over the generations, almost all other states have come to their senses, asserting the basic principle that just because you altered a lottery ticket, poached an alligator, committed insurance fraud or even were caught in possession of cocaine doesn't mean you forever forfeit your central right as a citizen.

(In some states, murderers and felony sex criminals can never get back the right to vote, and they wouldn't in Florida.)

Instead, in the four laggard states, the only way for a former felon to get back the right to vote is for the governor to grant it, through individual acts of executive clemency.

Florida's current governor, Rick Scott, has okayed nary a trickle of the thousands of requests he gets each year, and has put in place a five-year waiting period before someone who's completed his or her sentence can even ask.

Republicans from George W. Bush to John McCain to Rick Santorum to Rand Paul are on record supporting felony reenfranchisement. Will they have the guts to loudly and proudly back it in 2018 when doing so could make a difference in the way one of the country's largest swing states swings in 2020?

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