New Law Gives Voting Rights to California’s Jailed Felons

Perhaps jealous of all the positive left-wing attention Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe got this year when he restored voting rights to thousands of ex-cons, California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill this week that makes McAuliffe look like a red-blooded constitutional conservative.

California has allowed former felons to vote since the mid-1970s, so how could Brown possibly out-“progressive” the mainstream left? Why, by signing a bill that will let thousands of convicted felons still behind bars vote in upcoming California elections!

On Wednesday, Brown signed AB 2466, a bill that plays games with language so as to change California’s penal code without getting the OK from voters. Of course, with a few more semantic changes like this, Democrats in California will be able to pass any liberal nonsense through public referendum. Good thing about having a prison filled with sympathetic eligible voters: you can be pretty damn sure they’ll make it down to the ol’ ballot box.

Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, the author of the bill, said it would help convicts move smoothly back into their communities. “Civic participation can be a critical component of re-entry and has been linked to reduced recidivism,” Weber said earlier this year.

Now, since that reasoning is baldfaced nonsense…and since Weber and Brown can’t come out and say the real reason – “Look at all of these wasted Democratic votes!” – they have to sell the public on a more believable lie. In this case, like in most cases, they’re using racial discrimination to bolster their legislation.

“I wrote AB 2466 because I want to send a message to the nation that California will not stand for discrimination in voting,” Weber said Wednesday.

This logic is supported by California’s ACLU, which said this of the bill:

Since slavery was abolished, felony disenfranchisement laws, which strip individuals of their vote because of a criminal conviction, have been silencing the political voice of communities of color. Three out of every four men in California prisons are men of color. Felony disenfranchisement laws are a legacy of Jim Crow.

Uh-huh. Blacks can’t help but commit crimes, so society should not hold that against them. When you really strip this argument down, that’s what they’re saying. “Communities of color” cannot be held responsible for their actions, so any attempt to do so is just a sneaky form of white supremacy. That about right?

Cool. Can’t wait to see how California benefits from allowing certain felons to vote. Can’t wait until it expands (inevitably) to include all felons. And then, maybe in another twenty years or so, California can change it so that ONLY felons can vote.

Who even knows anymore…