Governor Steve Beshear, Democrat of Kentucky, only has two weeks left in office, but he’s determined to go out with a bang. Beshear announced today that he is issuing an executive order restoring voting rights for nonviolent ex-felons who have completed their sentences. This will give 170,000 ex-offenders the opportunity to register to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.
It’s a huge victory for voting rights in the Bluegrass State.
Kentucky is one of only three states, along with Florida and Iowa, where ex-felons cannot vote unless the governor personally restores their rights — preventing 7.4 percent of the voting-age population in the state and 22.3 percent of African-Americans from voting after serving their time.
Nationally, 5.85 million Americans can’t vote because of felon-disenfranchisement laws, according to the Sentencing Project, including 2.2 million African-Americans.
[For more of this story, written by Ari Berman, go to http://billmoyers.com/2015/11/...usands-of-ex-felons/]
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