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Crist Looking At Rights Restoration?

Posted Feb 6, 2007 by William March

Updated Feb 6, 2007 at 03:59 PM

Is Gov. Charlie Crist finally getting ready to move on his campaign promise for restoration of voting rights for former felons? A meeting scheduled for last week in the governor’s office, cancelled because of the tornados, suggests he may be.

Crist was to meet Friday with former presidential candidate, congressman and HUD Secretary Jack Kemp. The subject, said Kemp, was to be rights restoration, which he said he favors “with conditions.”

Florida is one of fewer than a dozen states that permanently ban felons from voting unless they obtain executive clemency, a process that can be arduous and take years.

Crist said during his campaign that he favored instituting automatic restoration of voting rights. But he didn’t act on the subject while sitting as a member of the Cabinet as attorney general and education commissioner, and hasn’t acted on it since become governor last month.

Kemp, a former GOP star who’s now a lobbyist and civic activist, said the meeting was scheduled at the request of the NAACP and the ACLU, and hasn’t been rescheduled. The two plan to talk by phone instead.

Kemp, whose wife is involved in Charles Colson’s prison ministry, said such moves would “encourage behavior modification in prison … I want the prison population to know that there is redemption.”

But he acknowledged the move is controversial and that former Gov. Jeb Bush, whom he called “one of my heroes,” opposes it.