Earlier this year, Jenny Durkan, a lawyer for Washington State Democrats, said there was no evidence of voting by felons in last fall’s contested gubernatorial election:

“The Republican Party and [GOP gubernatorial candidate Dino] Rossi have repeated in many forms that felons have voted in this election, yet they have not provided proof of a single such vote. “

Democrats now acknowledge that 544 felons in Rossi-leaning districts voted illegally in last fall’s gubernatorial election.

While there is no way to know how those felons voted, the experience of Florida in 2000 is instructive. According to Lowell Ponte,

In 2000 an estimated 10,000 felons voted illegally in Florida. Where their voter registration was checked, 85 percent of these convicted felons were registered as Democrats.

Even if only 544 felons voted in Washington State last fall and 85 percent of them voted for Gregoire, the felons changed a 252-vote Rossi victory into a 129-vote Gregoire victory.

That understates the impact of the felon vote because it’s limited to the 544 felon voters that Democrats have identified in Rossi-leaning districts. Republicans have documented hundreds more felon voters in Gregoire-leaning districts. Based on the Florida numbers, it’s reasonable to assume that a majority of felons in all districts, both Rossi-leaning and Gregoire-leaning, voted for Gregoire.

Bottom line: if felons had been prohibited from voting last fall, as the law requires, Rossi almost certainly would be governor today.

Oh, and on a related note, Hillary Clinton continues to push her Felon Voter Access Act. Check this out:

A recent study by Jeff Manza and Marcus Britton of Northwestern University and Christopher Uggen of the University of Minnesota found that 30 percent of felons would vote if Hillary’s law was passed. That’s 1.4 million new voters.

With 85 percent of felon voters statistically likely to vote Democrat, that could add up to 1.2 million votes to presidential candidate Clinton’s tally in 2008.

In a close race, that’s more than enough to put her over the top.

comments (0)   trackbacks (15)