While my state is so clenched that merely allowing a vote on Sunday liquor sales is seen as some type of affront to human decency, Florida is joining the 21st Century on a rather serious issue:

In a change billed by some as historic but others as incremental, Gov. Charlie Crist and the Florida Cabinet this morning approved a plan to give back the civil rights of tens, and possibly hundreds, of thousands of convicted felons.

Crist and Cabinet members voted 3-1 to overhaul the state’s Jim Crow-era system forcing most convicted felons who fulfilled their sentences to complete a cumbersome — sometimes impossible — application process before their civil rights are restored, including the rights to vote, hold elected office and serve on a jury.

Under the new process, most convicted felons — as many as eight in 10, according to Crist’s office — will no longer have to wait for a hearing before their rights are restored. People convicted of more violent crimes, such as car-jacking, kidnapping and assault, will still have to go through a hearing, but they will no longer have to wait five years first. Only people convicted of the most heinous crimes — murder and sex crimes — will have to go through the full application process.

It only makes sense.  If these people have done their time and have reintegrated themselves back into society, there is no reason whatsoever for them to remain second-class citizens.  Ex-cons have been punished for their entire lives, all because of outdated rules that were designed more for racist purposes than for anything having to do with the system as a whole.  Surprisingly astute on Charlie’s part to realize the wrong in this, good one…