Restoration Update - Floor Amendments and other news

Over the last few days, HB 70, the Restoration of Voting Rights bill has grown to having 18 legislative co-sponsors, in part because of your calls, letters, and conversations with legislators.  Keep it up!

Please call the Legislative Message Line at 1-800-372-7181 and leave a message for your Representative, as well as Speaker Jody Richards and Larry Clark to ask them to "pass HB 70 with no floor amendments"

Unfortunately, Representatives Hoover and Wuchner have filed 5 negative floor amendments to HB 70, our Restoration of Voting Rights bill. 

Hoover’s amendments chip away at the bill by excluding some former felons (such as people convicted of prostitution or making methamphetamines) from ever being able to get their voting rights back automatically, even after they’ve served their sentence.   Wuchner’s amendment gives former felons another hoop to jump through by making them complete a civics course before getting their rights back. 

KFTC is against these floor amendments because they are unfair to people who have served their debt to society and they serve no purpose in preventing crime.  Furthermore, studies show that people who don’t vote, actually have much higher recidivism rates than people who do. 

We're also having a workshop tomorrow for former felons to practice using their personal stories to advance the campaign to restore voting rights to all former felons in the state of Kentucky.  

If you're a former felon, your voice is particularly powerful in this campaign and we'd love for you to come out and be involved.

We need other people to come out too - to listen to stories, take down quotes, work with people, take pictures, and offer constructive criticism.

- Restoration of Voting Rights Spokesperson Training – Saturday, February 9th at 2pm at Hunter Presbyterian Church in Lexington (Corner of Nicholasville Rd and Rosemont). We’ll bring together former felons from across the state to share our stories about their desire to vote, talk about how these personal stories are powerful, and get comfortable telling them to groups, legislators, the media, or even just our neighbors.