Free Republic

The State of Florida could be seeing a significant increase in a new voting group after several celebrities have paid the fines and apparently cleared the way for up to 13,000 felons to cast their votes in Tuesday’s election, according to a report. LeBron James and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, are among those celebrities listed as having paid monies to the nonprofit Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC), the Tampa Bay Times reports. According to the paper, some $27 million in fines and fees have been paid.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 8 - The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear cases from New York and Washington State on whether states violate the federal Voting Rights Act when they strip felons of the right to vote. But with 48 states, all except Maine and Vermont, disenfranchising millions of people who have been convicted of crimes, the issue remains very much alive in the lower courts, and the justices' action did not foreclose accepting a future case. The Voting Rights Act prohibits states from applying any "voting qualification or prerequisite" in a manner that has a racially discriminatory effect. Inmates...

YOU MIGHT NOT expect that Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner (D) would have attracted controversy with his modest efforts to restore voting rights to ex-felons. More than 200,000 former offenders are disenfranchised in the commonwealth, where ex-felons are barred from voting for life unless the governor intervenes. Mr. Warner has restored the right to vote of only about 1,900 of them. Yet that has been enough for some Republicans in the General Assembly to cry foul. Last week Del. Bradley P. Marrs (R-Richmond) wrote a letter complaining that he was "very disturbed to learn of the breakneck pace" at which...