After years of election-year crimes under the Jeb Bush administration, the air finally seems to be clearing. The new governor, also a Republican, is talking like a Democrat. He’ll be addressing global climate change, lower property taxes, and better funding of education. But most importantly, he said that he’ll insist on a paper trail for ballots, and will restore voting rights to felons who have served their time, with exceptions for rapists, murderers, and major drug traffickers. Why that pattern? Because most “felons” are minorities who are made felons not by their actions, but by racist disparities in the law. Whites use powder cocaine more (just ask the president), while minorities more often use crack cociane, and:

Current policy generates a 100 to 1 penalty ratio for crack-related offenses. For instance, possession of only 5 grams of crack-cocaine yields a 5 year mandatory minimum sentence, however it takes 500 grams of powder cocaine to prompt the same sentence. Moreover, crack-cocaine is the only drug for which the first offense of simple possession can trigger a federal mandatory minimum sentence. Yet “simple possession of any quantity of any other substance by a first time offender – including powder cocaine – is a misdemeanor offense punishable by a maximum of one year in prison.”

Which means that whites get to keep their right to vote while minorities get deprived of theirs, even if the whites get caught with far more drugs on them. That’s what the reversal of the felon’s voting rights issue really is all about–though you can positively expect that conservative pundits will paint this as a “Democrats love criminals” issue. The irony in that is palpable: the wingnuts want to block cocaine users from voting because of their politics and/or color, but on the pretense of their being “criminals” because they used cocaine–while they are more than happy to elect president someone who used a lot more cocaine.

Florida Republicans are not so enthusiastic about their new governor, however:

The result was an odd tableau in the packed House chamber as Democrats seated in the back recesses rose repeatedly to applaud Crist’s speech as front row Republicans slowly joined them.

“It’s great to have a Democratic governor,” said Rep. Keith Fitzgerald, D-Sarasota. “You could see the standing ovations start in the back row and move forward. You could actually see some of the representatives in the front looking over their shoulders, feeling uncomfortable and then standing up.”

Yes, the return of honest vote-counting and letting minorities vote should be worrisome to Florida Republicans. Who knows, we might even have a major election in Florida where a bogus “felons list” will not be generated so as to disenfranchise tens of thousands of Democratic voters who never committed a crime. Wouldn’t that be something?

Of course, this all depends on Crist keeping to his word, and Florida Republicans not going full-throttle to block it. So, we’ll see.