Kentucky May Soon Restore Voting Rights To 200,000 People With Felony Convictions
For most of 2020, Savvy Shabazz traversed the state of Kentucky to help register Kentuckians like him, with prior felony convictions that had left them permanently barred from voting. All the while, he kept one eye on his cellphone, waiting for a call that would allow him to register and cast a ballot in November too.
After winning election in 2019, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) immediately signed an executive order restoring the right to vote to many people with felony convictions. Since then, more than 180,000 Kentuckians have had their rights restored. But the order failed to include just as many people, and Shabazz, who had served more than five years in prison on felony drug charges and still had to complete his parole, was among those who remained ineligible.
To vote, he’d need a pardon that Beshear had personally promised to deliver. But as the election approached, his application still hadn’t found its way across the governor’s desk.
“It would’ve meant a lot for me to do a lot of the work, and for me to get to participate myself,” he said on Election Day. “I can continue to make communities better, but I don’t have the rights that everyday citizens do.”
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/kentucky-felony-voting-rights-104500762.html
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