Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried is calling on Governor Ron DeSantis to reinstitute the automatic restoration of voting rights.
“I am asking the clemency board to do what is right, what is conscionable with empathy. And that is to redo our clemency rules and to have an automatic restoration of rights once you had left the system and are no longer in prison or jail," Fried said.
The state had an automatic system, but former Gov. Rick Scott changed it when he assumed office in 2011. DeSantis canceled the June clemency meeting. Fried says there are 17,000 pending applications for clemency. Six-hundred of those, are people waiting on the Governor to sign off so that their rights can be restored.
