Back in 2004, I spent a month in the Tampa Bay Area organizing teams to do voter registration drives. One of the most common rejections we got was people telling us that they couldn’t register to vote because they were felons. It was shocking not just for how many people told us that they were felons but for how willing people were to tell a stranger about it. In some cases, it seemed like they were lying and it was just a convenient Florida-style way of telling a door-knocker to go away. But, where I come from, you’d never shoo away a canvasser by confessing to having a serious criminal record. If that were the reason you couldn’t register, you’d make up some other excuse. What was different in Florida was the total lack of shame associated with the term, which I took to mean that felonies were passed out far too regularly in Florida. It shouldn’t be a normal thing to have a felony conviction.
In any case, can you guess who wants to help fix the problem?
