Supreme Court stabs another GOP knife into US democracy by upholding ex-felon vote ban
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by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
http://www.opednews.comWith nary a peep from the mainstream media, the US Supreme Court has stabbed yet another partisan knife into the American electoral system.
This time the court has let stand Florida's infamous 137-year-old ban on voting rights for ex-felons. It was this same Jim Crow ban that the GOP used to disenfranchise thousands of Floridians in 2000, providing the margin by which George W. Bush took the presidency. The ruling continues to take the vote from millions of African-Americans and non-violent offenders----and, in practice, others who have broken no laws at all. It is highly likely to strengthen the lock of the Republican party and its future candidates on the US presidency.
In Florida 2000, Republican Governor Jeb Bush used the ban as a pretext for disenfranchising tens of thousands of mostly black voters who committed no crime at all, but whose names allegedly resembled those who did. In the lead-up to his brother's test at the polls, Bush hired a Republican computer firm to compile a dubious list which Bush then used to deprive perhaps 120,000 Floridians, perhaps more, of their right to vote.
It has since been shown that thousands of those who lost their vote had never been convicted of anything. According to the Sentencing Project, the number of alleged Florida ex-felons effectively deprived of their right to vote in 2000 may have been as high as 600,000, roughly a thousand times as many as allegedly gave George W. Bush his margin of victory.
Ohio's laws encompass no ban on ex-felon voting rights. But Ohio Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell also served as the state co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. As chief administrator of Ohio's 2004 election, Blackwell allowed county Boards of Elections to send threatening letters to thousands ex-felons or alleged ex-felons. Letters also went to many registered voters who had been convicted of no crime at all, helping give George W. Bush a second term.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_bob_fitr_051116_supreme_court_stabs_.htmdp