Paper Dolls and Today's Restoration of Voting Rights Action

     An open letter to Governor Beshear, delivered earlier today along with a blanket full of 186 paper dolls, and accompanied by a few hundred calls, emails, and letters throughout the day.

    Governor Beshear, 
   On behalf of our 5,700 members and 186,000 Kentuckians who have at some point in their lives been convicted of a felony, we thank you for streamlining the restoration process earlier this year to allow many hundreds of Kentuckians to vote in this year’s election – and many more in elections yet to come.  This is a real step forward for our Democracy and for justice in our Commonwealth.
   We realize that there are those in this state who oppose these changes and we admire your determination to do the right thing despite them, but we also promise that there are far more of us who support restoration of voting rights for former felons than those who oppose it.  We know this both through anecdotal experiences all over the state from Warren County to Pike County and everywhere in-between going door to door and talking to voters about the issue – but also from neutral UK Survey Research Center polls that show a double-digit lead in the number of supporters for restoration.
   As the voter registration deadline is only seven days away, we ask you to take another extraordinary step – we ask you to use your power to issue a blanket restoration to all former felons who have served their debt to society, giving them enough time to register by the deadline and make their voices heard in this historic election.
   We present you with this blanket – with 186 paper dolls, each representing 1,000 Kentuckians who can’t vote because of Kentucky’s extreme and regressive disenfranchisement laws.  Please use your power to grant them a blanket restoration of voting rights before it’s too late.  We leave them in your hands.

                                                                          - Kentuckians For The Commonwealth