Kentucky's new Dem Governor Gives Voting Rights to Some 140,000 Former Felons

[Demovictory9]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/12/us/kentucky-felons-voting-rights.html

Kentucky Gives Voting Rights to Some 140,000 Former Felons
The state’s new Democratic governor said he would ease one of the nation’s strictest policies. Iowa will be alone in barring voting by all felons.

Kentucky’s newly elected Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, signed an executive order on Thursday restoring the vote and the right to hold public office to more than 140,000 residents who have completed sentences for nonviolent felonies.

With that move, Kentucky joined a fast-growing movement to return voting rights to former felons, leaving Iowa as the only state that strips all former felons of the right to cast a ballot.

Since 1997, 24 states have approved some type of measure to ease voting bans, according to the Sentencing Project, a Washington group that advocates criminal justice policy changes. Kentucky joins Virginia, Florida, Nevada and other states that have extended voting rights in the last few years.

Mr. Beshear said the order would apply to more than half of the estimated 240,000 Kentuckians with felonies in their past, as well as those who complete their sentences in the future.