Thanks for highlighting this, Lowell.  I think Kaine would be receptive to restoring voting rights for ex-felons - we (along with other allies) just need to ask him.

This is pure injustice.  People serve their time.  End of story.  I was listening to a NPR piece where one of those good ol boy politicians was discussing the negative......why should we give these people their rights back?

Because it is their right.  I think most states restore the right automatically when a person leaves prison.

The impact of these laws is to disenfranchise a lot of one group: African-Americans, surprise, surprise.  Who woulda thunk it?

Maybe President Obama will take this issue on and persuade the good people of the USA to restore the voting rights of people who pay their debt to society.  It is the decent thing to do and just maybe it helps them feel more invested in the country they live in.

As I recall, a very sore subject to the Englishmen who were colonists in America (and who were coming fresh off the English Civil Wars), and one of their grievances against the monarch, was the habit of kings to issue Bills of Attainder against those they disliked, and considered disloyal or traitors to their royal person. Attainder meant permanent loss of civil rights.

Apparently our modern Tories from the Republican right wingnut group wants to bring back the royal custom of denying civil rights to anyone they dislike.  So much for the American Revolution.