The Disenfranchisement Of The Voters

In politics the right to vote is king. Many people in the country take this right for granted, choosing not to vote and living outside of society in a radical stance of separation from the state.
Believe it or not, persons within the prison population, except in two states, lose their right to vote completely. So hopefully the idea that a person's right to vote is a privilege not a right, becomes clear to the people of our country.
In fact, the 14th Amendment makes clear that the federal government in no way can impose on states whether or not felons have the right to vote. This means that in 35 states of our nation, many of them Southern, felons are excluded from voting until they have finished sentencing, parole and probation.
California takes this stance, with a major concern in our state on whether or not this is fair, since the length of parole and probation often can be pushed for numerous years after sentencing.
In about one-fifth of the states, felons are disenfranchised even after they have served their time, meaning they usually have to receive permission or go through certain steps to get the right to vote back.
Recently the State of Virginia gained media coverage in the Washington Post when they profiled Kemba Smith, one of the prisoners that former President Bill Clinton pardoned in 2000.
Smith is still unable to vote in Virginia, even though she has gained a bachelor's degree and is now applying to law school.
Gov. Mark Warner (D) as only given 2,100 felony offenders back their right to vote since 2002.
Many states make it so hard to regain the vote that it becomes a prize at the end of a long journey that nobody really wants.
Sadly, in places as Florida, Mississippi and Virginia, they might as well take away the right to vote for life.
The problem compounds itself with a striking eight states that ban felons from voting for life.
All in all this totals about 4 million persons in the U.S. unable to vote in any given year, with close to 1.4 million of them being of African-American descent and around 1.5 million banned for life.
Digging into the statistics this means that 13 percent of African-American males have lost their right to vote in the U.S. Sadly, the UC Berkeley's Criminal Law Review fears that all of these statistics are on the rise and many people believe that Southern states use this law to keep racial discrimination in place.
Lastly, in the 2000 presidential election they estimated that the number of Democrats in Florida disenfranchised by either being in jail or having their right revoked would have easily pushed the state in the favor of Gore.
Just a heads-up for screaming liberals.