The AP unwittingly has stumbled over one of the ways the Demoats are using to gain power in November: Fostering the Felon vote.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — [1] Undaunted by the heat, James Bailey spent his late-summer afternoons walking Virginia’s bleakest neighborhoods on the hunt for ex-cons — each a potential voter who might cast the decisive ballot in this hotly contested state.
Finding them isn’t the hard part. It’s getting them to admit that a past mistake has kept them from the ballot box.
“People are really, really reluctant to say, ‘I lost my rights to vote,'” Bailey said of his quest, which continued in the run-up to Monday’s registration deadline in Virginia for the November election.
[2]Nationally, there are roughly 4 million released felons whose convictions have cost them the right to vote at least temporarily, if not permanently. To return to the ballot box, felons must negotiate suffrage laws that vary from state to state, in many cases working with election officials who can be both unfamiliar with the law and hostile to former convicts seeking to register.
Such challenges matter little to Bailey and others trying to return former criminals to voter rolls, an effort they consider crucial in light of the results of the past two presidential elections: A shift of a few hundred votes in Florida in 2000 would have changed the outcome of the presidential race, and the results in 2004 came down to a margin of 119,000 votes in Ohio.
When looking at a candidate and his or her qualifications, it is wise I think to view in very sharp detail, who it is that supports them. In this case, the concepts are fairly clear. I suspect that most would be repulsed on finding out about all this. Perhaps it’s why we’ve heard so little about this?