A major argument by those who support disfranchising people with felony convictions is that their cases ought to be heard individually to decide who should be able to have their voting rights restored and who shouldn’t. On the face of it, this sounds plausible. But in practice it is inequitable, unwieldy, expensive, and arguably no state has ever done a good job of it.

One state struggling with this issue is Florida, where all former felons remain permanently disfranchised unless they apply for a pardon or seek civil rights restoration through the Board of Executive Clemency.

Despite spending over $4 million a year to maintain its cumbersome clemency process, Florida has a backlog of at least 8,000 cases waiting (estimates vary widely). Ex-felons who succeed in getting a clemency hearing, usually after waiting for several years, are given five minutes or so to make their case to the governor and  three of his cabinet members. Governor Bush frequently asks them whether they are using alcohol, or getting along with their family, or whether they are remorseful for their crime. As Marc Mauer of The Sentencing Project says, it is “entirely inappropriate in a democracy to be imposing such character tests on something as fundamental as the right to vote.”

Former felons who are granted a clemency hearing are generally given about a week’s notice before they have to get themselves and any witnesses they’d like to have testify on their behalf to Tallahassee, paying for their costs for travel and lost work time themselves. For some, the process is just overwhelming, especially as they try to reenter society and turn their lives around.

Florida’s efforts to streamline its process just show how unwieldy, time-consuming and just plain difficult it is to decide on a case-by-case basis. Other states also have processes that are difficult for ex-offenders. Why are such processes necessary at all? And couldn’t tax dollars be better spent elsewhere?