Right Decision- for the Wrong Reason – Not Enough and Illegally Enacted

On Saturday Virginia Governor Terry McAuliff signed an executive order restoring the voting rights of 206,000 felons. The order applies to all felons who had completed sentences and supervised release.

The order expands the practice of former Gov. Bob McDonnell who restored the voting rights of 6800 felons who had applied for relief on a case by case basis. McDonnell automatically restored the rights of any nonviolent convicted felon following an application and completion of court ordered requirements.

Now McAuliff’s decision was correct. It is ridiculous to take voting rights forever from someone convicted of a crime with the possible exception of voting fraud.  Voting rights should automatically be restored upon completion of the sentence. No application, no favors, no political involvement just automatic restoration.

McAulliff’s first mistake was ignoring the requirements. The details don’t matter. What is important and ironical is that every felon is a felon for ignoring legal requirements.

McAuliff’s next mistake was making voting right for felons a race issue. McAuliff stated this action was largely aimed at Virginia’s long and sad history of suppressing African-American voting power.  If that is true the issue is that African-Americans are being convicted at a rate that is “suppressing African-American voting power.” If that is true the issue is the conviction rate NOT losing voting rights that is the problem. I am certain that most- if not all people (regardless of race) who are convicted of a felony would gladly swap voting rights for a not guilty verdict.

The actual issue is a “can of worms” that politicians don’t want to discuss. The fact is – a larger percentage of blacks are incarcerated in America than other races. If African-Americans are committing a larger percentage of crimes that is to be expected. If they are being convicted based on race it is wrong.  Studies are done on the mating habits of frogs but no one will spend the time and money to study this situation.  The reason is simple. Whatever the study proved would be attacked by those who have political and financial axes to grind.

Another fact that applies to almost every situation is the “Parado Principle” which is there is an 80/20 percentage that affects almost everything. For example in most businesses and organizations 20 percent of the workers do 80 percent of the work.  20 percent of beer drinkers drink 80 percent of the beer. 80 percent of complaints and problems come from 20 percent. According to Parado 80 percent of crimes are committed by 20 percent of criminals.

I think a simple solution to the voting rights issue is for felony convictions to expire after five years of good behavior. If it is wrong to take voting rights forever (and it is) it is also wrong to carry a conviction and all of the negative consequences forever.  When hiring does it really matter that someone was convicted years ago? I am more concerned with a person’s character today than what it was 20 years ago. I believe in redemption.  A youthful indiscretion that resulted in conviction decades ago is of less concern to me than the same indiscretion that was never caught or a recent conviction.

In fact many of you have committed a felony but most of you were never caught, charged and convicted. Because you were sneakier or more successful in your crimes why should you have a clean record while others who have paid for their crimes have a record forever?

I have only met one person in my life who claims he has never broken ANY law. He is lying by the way.