I mentioned in an earlier post that I was going to roll out my legislative agenda. This is the fourth in the series.
Computer whiz kid Aubrey L. Beach III, a Maury grad and currently a student at Virginia Tech, found out the hard way that crime doesn’t pay. Tuesday he was sentenced to 8 months in jail, after pleading guilty to one count of production of false identification documents.
Beach’s computer skills became well known throughout the community, his attorney said. At 16, Beach began making driver’s licenses for his friends, changing the date of birth so the youths would appear to be of legal drinking age, prosecutors said.
Initially, he charged $50 per license but increased his fee to $150.
The licenses were nearly indistinguishable from real ones. He created them with holograms and special paper he purchased over the Internet. He also used software to change not only the date of birth on the front of the card but the birth date hidden in the license’s bar code.
What struck me when I read this story Wednesday morning was the fact that the guilty plea by Beach was a felony. And we all know what that means: loss of the right to vote. Young Mr. Beach joins some 5.3 million Americans who have also lost their right to vote due to such convictions. But Beach also joined some 240,000 Virginians ~ and in Virginia, getting back the ability to vote is an uphill climb.
Virginia is one of two states that permanently bars felons from voting. According to a 2006 op-ed piece by the Virginian-Pilot:
For ex-felons here, however, Virginia is among the toughest states in the country to regain voting rights. Released felons must first finish supervised probation and parole. They then must wait three years if they committed a nonviolent offense, or five years for violent offenses, election fraud, or drug-distribution or manufacturing convictions. Only then can they petition the governor for restoration of civil rights.
No offense to the governor, but doesn’t he have something better to do with his time than review applications? After all, why shouldn’t voting rights be restored once the individual has paid his/her debt to society?
The truth is that the majority of the rest of the states (pdf) have some form of automatic restoration of voting rights. Again from the Pilot, this time from April 2007:
Some 39 states and the District of Columbia now allow voting after completion of a sentence, if not sooner, according to The Sentencing Project.
Virginia, unfortunately, maintains a system increasingly out of step with the rest of the nation.
[…]
This cumbersome procedure should be arrested. There’s no pride in being one of the two worst states for disfranchisement of released felons.
Year after year, Senator Yvonne Miller introduces legislation that would rectify this problem. 2008 is no different; Senator Miller has introduced SJ7. As this article points out, it is a goal that progressives and conservatives alike can ~ and should ~ support.
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VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Yvonne Miller’s bills have become a running joke among Republicans.
That said, I think it should be easier – but not automatic. The vote should be used as a carrot in rehabilitation. Once the felon has demostrated he’s a constructive member of society again, restore the right to vote.
By the time a felon completes his/her sentence, parole and probation, I think we have a pretty good idea whether they are a constructive member of society. So unless they have done something wrong during that period, why not automatically restore them?
Are the Democrats really that hard up for voters? 🙂
What about restoring felons’ rights to own and carry firearms? If they have redeemed themselves enough to be a voter, would it not also follow that they should have their second amendment rights restored?
Kidding aside, restoring voting rights and any others should not be automatic or even easy, but it should be possible.
Ya think young Mr. Beach is a Democrat? 😉
As for the firearms – yes, it makes sense. But that’s not the topic of this article 😉
While it is currently possible to get voting rights restored, there are still 240,000 Virginians who can’t vote because of the process. And young Mr. Beach has been added to the list. Seems to me that nonviolent felonies, such as those committed by Beach, should have some route to restoration of their rights, without it being a one-in-a-million chance.
“No offense to the governor, but doesn’t he have something better to do with his time than review applications?”
You’re right — give it to the Lieutenant Governor.
“After all, why shouldn’t voting rights be restored once the individual has paid his/her debt to society?”
Because felons have shown a clear lack of judgement and lack of respect for the Law. Why would you want such people to vote? Is it, perhaps, that they vote overwhelmingly for Democrats?
If Mr. Beach gets his voting rights restored, he needs to be given a paper ballot. It sounds like he could do whatever he wanted with the electronic kind.
Dr. Tabor makes a good point (even in jest). Why not restore the right to gun ownership as well? If they have paid their debt to society, shouldn’t they have all their rights restored?
Restoring the right to vote will probably help Democrats more than Republicans, but it should be done anyway.
Of course Yvonne Miller and all black Democrats want felons to vote. All of the black ones (the majority) would vote 100 percent for her and anyone else with a D behind their names. Blacks vote in blocks without any regard to what this person really stands for or what kind of job they have done. They simply file down to the rec center with their voter guides in hand which their black preacher gave them in church on Sunday, and look for the D.
But the majority of these black voters could not tell you one thing about the person for whom they are voting.
While we constantly hear about racist whites, everyone knows that Gov Wilder was elected by a majority of white Virginians and the majority of folks who will vote for Obama in the next couple months will be white. However, if given the choice between a white and black candidate, blacks will vote 100 percent for the black even if he is a criminal (or maybe…especially if he is a criminal).
If Miller ever gets this absurd bill passed, it will be the first thing she has done other than sponsoring endless proclamations. She is truly useless and clueless, but she is in a majority black district and her constituents only see skin color.
Spoken like a true Republican! Shame! Shame!
Mr. Gibson, why do you think blacks can not support anyone but a Democrat? Obviously you do not talk to too many blacks. I know many conservative blacks that support Republicans candidates that espouse principles of fiscal responsibility. It hurts them when some Republican politicians pander to racists to get a vote.
Wow, Dave. I wonder if you live on the same planet I do. Or maybe somebody slipped some hate juice in your Perrier.
Last time I looked, the majority of people in prison where white. Now, using your logic, all the white people must vote for Republicans, right? So if we restore the voting rights of white felons, it will benefit the Republicans.
That sounds ludicrous, doesn’t it? Yeah – just like all that garbage you wrote.
Your comments are about the most offensive I’ve seen in the Virginia blogosphere. And given some of the stuff I’ve seen, that’s saying something.
And if you think Senator Miller is doing such a horrible job, I guess you’re saying the same thing about the Virginia Senate. Because the leadership just named her a committee chair. Of course, if you really believe she’s doing such a bad job, why not move to the 5th and run against her?
I would agree that the vast majority of felons would vote Democrat, but that has nothing to do with race.
It is more a matter of a similar world view.
Criminals and Democrats both feel they are entitled to the fruits of the labor of others. They only differ in the manner of seizing it.
🙂
How’s that, Don? Got any stats on the felon population? Ya think young Mr. Beach – alumni of Maury, student at VT – would be a Democrat?
I don’t need stats to poke fun at Democrats, its an art form, not a science.
🙂
he seems to be a very smart young man and as long as he pays for his crime and learns his lesson why not give him back his right to vote?