The NAACP Tuesday launched a national drive to restore the voting rights of ex-felons.
They did it in Florida because the state has the largest number of disenfranchised ex-offenders in the U.S. – more than 1.5 million.
The group brought out Actor Charles Dutton to help them make their case. He says he was unable to vote for 31 years after serving time.
Dutton said, "And what people don't realize, or fail to realize: Once a person decides that they want to register to vote, they want to go down and make their voice be heard, that is part and parcel of being rehabilitated."
Most states automatically restore the vote to those who have paid their debt to society. In 2007, then-Governor Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet voted to institute such a policy in Florida. But last year, Governor Rick Scott and the newly elected Cabinet reversed it. Critics say such efforts are intended to suppress the black vote
NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous said restoring the vote shouldn't be a partisan issue.
"It is a rights issue”, said Jealous. “When we are in Maine, where the NAACP runs the only prison-wide voter registration drive in the country, 90% of the inmates are white, and the only party that shows up to recruit new voters is the Republican Party. And the NAACP is there."
A study by the Miami Herald and Tampa Bay Times showed that 7,000 people were struck from Florida's voter rolls in the first four months of 2012. 51% were Democrats and 17% Republicans.
A spokeswoman for Scott said the governor "believes that for convicted felons to re-enter civic society, they must demonstrate a commitment to remaining crime-free as well as a willingness to request to have their rights restored."
