California Governor Allows Felons to Vote from Prison

This Wednesday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill allowing felons awaiting release to vote from their prison cells – a move that he claims will ease their transition back into normal society. 

The bill will allow thousands of felons to vote in California’s elections, and opponents worry that these votes could impact the outcome of a close race.  

Backers like Daniel Zingale, Senior VP of The California Endowment Helath Foundation, argue that mass disenfranchisement must come to an end, and denying felons the right to vote “is a tragic legacy of the Jim Crow era that disproportionately affects and diminishes the power of communities of color.” 

What Zingale seems to be missing here is that not all California felons are black.

“It is very disappointing that felons still serving their sentences behind bars will now be able to vote since Governor Brown failed to veto this really bad bill,” laments California Senator Patricia Bates. 

As we wrote in April, Governor Terry McAuliffe has engaged in a similar effort to restore voting rights to criminals in Virginia. McAuliffe, a close friend of Hillary Clinton, plans to restore voting rights to nearly 200,000 former felons just in time to register for the November elections. In his last move, he personally restored voting rights to 13,000 criminals. 

Congressional Democrats have followed suit with a bill that will give criminals back their voting rights upon release from prison, and Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) is pushing to restore voting rights to non-violent offenders. 

“It would be transformative if everybody [in the nation] voted,” said President Obama. 

Sure, transformative in handing Hillary the throne.

Author’s Note: The logic behind why felons are not allowed to vote is sketchy: on the one hand, it seems a crime to deny a constitutional right to an American citizen; on the other hand, a felon has clearly shown bad faith with the nation and should not get a voice in elections. 

Nonetheless, Governor Brown should be ashamed of himself for pushing such a blatantly partisan bill.