Getting Every Last Vote - Ex-Offenders' Double Jeopardy

Barack Obama's voter registration initiative is in full swing. The campaign is targeting young people and African Americans in the South, where more than half of all blacks live. The New York Times reported:

Officials in Mr. Obama's campaign say they are bullish on the South, and they have signaled their aggressiveness with early campaign appearances in North Carolina and Virginia, major voter registration drives in the region, and television advertising in Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.

Obama deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand told the Times:

If you go in and look at the number of unregistered voters in demographic groups that are important to Barack's candidacy - younger voters, African-American voters - the potential is just incredible.

While no one knows the number of unregistered black voters in the target states, the Sentencing Project estimates that 5.3 million Americans, including more than 2 million blacks, have lost the right to vote due to a felony conviction. A whopping 13 percent of all black men are unable to vote.

In Virginia, 208,343 African Americans are unable to vote. The number is 160,905 in Georgia and 42,227 in North Carolina.

In Florida, 293,545 blacks have been disenfranchised though they have paid their debt to society. Gov. Charlie Crist is to be commended for his role in expediting the restoration of the civil rights for 115,232 ex-felons. As the Times editorialized:

Among the world's democracies, the United States is uniquely unforgiving in denying ex-offenders the right to vote. Nowhere is the problem worse than in Florida, where criminal justice experts estimate that as many as 950,000 felons are barred from the voting booth.

Last year, Gov. Charlie Crist pushed through new rules that made it easier for some ex-offenders to become full citizens and helped restore voting rights to more than 100,000 former prisoners. But this is well short of what's needed - a complete overhaul of a wildly illogical system.

In most states, inmates win back their voting rights as soon as they are released from prison or when they complete parole or probation. One big reason that does not happen in Florida is that state law requires felons to first make restitution to their victims. And until their voting rights are restored, former prisoners are barred from scores of state-regulated occupations for which the restoration of voting rights is listed as a condition of employment.

P.O.V.'s "Election Day" premiered on PBS this week. The documentary chronicles the experiences of 11 voters in 11 different cities on Election Day 2004. The voters include New York City resident Leon Batts, an ex-felon who had recently regained the right to vote.

You can watch the full online until July 31 here.