Former felons voting rights should be restored

Florida legislators have a clear track record when it comes to doing what voters tell them. They don’t. You passed the “education lottery.”

They turned the funding into a shell game and left Florida schools among the worst funded in America. You passed Fair Districts. They spent more than $10 million of your taxes on lawyers, trying to fight your will.

You passed an environmental amendment.

They ignored you again — and then acted surprised when toxic green algae choked the state’s waterways.

You passed a medical marijuana amendment.

Yet two years later, you have a better chance of scoring a dime bag at any local high school than a chronic-pain sufferer has of getting smokable weed at a legitimate pharmacy.

Basically, Florida legislators follow orders about as well as a pet rock.

They don’t care what voters say. They don’t care about the Constitution. They just do as they please … and usually get re-elected.

So it’s not surprising that, on the heels of yet another voter mandate — to restore voting rights to former felons — there’s concern that lawmakers are once again dragging their feet.

Amendment 4 was clear. It said that once people have paid their debt to society, they get back their right to vote.

That’s how it works in most states. But in Florida, the governor and Cabinet force former felons to personally beg them for permission — and restore civil rights to fewer than 1 percent of former felons each year.

Amendment 4 changes that. It automatically restores voting rights for everyone except those convicted of murder or sex crimes. And it passed overwhelmingly — 65 percent to 35 percent.

Yet Rick Scott’s Secretary of State Ken Detzner recently said he thinks he needs “direction” from legislators before taking action. And legislators are hemming and hawing

Sen. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, told the Miami Herald: “I still have some questions.”

With due respect, senator: No one cares about your questions.

That was, in fact, the entire point of this amendment — to circumvent the Legislature —