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  3. Virginia Deprives the Right to Vote of Former Felons Four years have passed since Jennifer McDaniel was released from a Virg

Virginia Deprives the Right to Vote of Former Felons Four years have passed since Jennifer McDaniel was released from a Virg

admin2013-01-10  33
问题               Virginia Deprives the Right to Vote of Former Felons
    Four years have passed since Jennifer McDaniel was released from a Virginia prison, where she served time on a grand theft conviction for shoplifting. Since then, Ms. McDaniel, who is 43 and lives in Alexandria, has held a steady job managing a doghouse and dog-grooming business, learned to read and write, and, she says, get rid of the heroin addiction that laid waste to her life for 27 years. Last month, a Prince William County judge, noting that be was "favorably impressed" with her behavior and accomplishments, ended her supervised probation.
    Having paid her debt to society—and, she notes with some pride, "all my taxes"— Ms. McDaniel wants the right to vote. In 48 other states she would have it. But not in Virginia, where an antiquated (过时的) constitution robs her and tens of thousands of other former felons of their most fundamental democratic right.
    Such is the commonwealth’s disdain for the rights of former felons that it doesn’t even bother to compile an estimate of how many remain disenfranchised once their sentences have been served. Voting rights advocates say there are some 300,000 former convicts in that category; even if that figure is inflated, the numbers are staggering. What’s more, they are racially skewed (扭曲的) : Although African Americans account for just a fifth of Virginia’s 7. 8 million citizens, they are thought to constitute about half of those ineligible to vote. No wonder racist state lawmakers who reviewed the commonwealth’s constitution a century ago lauded the provision and, in the toxic spirit of Jim Crow, elected to keep it. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, a former civil rights lawyer, recognizes that the status quo is a shame and has backed legislation to change the constitution. (The legislation has cleared the Virginia Senate but not the Republican-controlled House of Delegates.) But Mr. Kaine, despite his extensive authority to issue executive orders, has been too timid to tackle the issue. Many experts say the governor would be on solid legal footing if he issued a blanket restoration of voting rights to former felons. He has declined to do so, citing lawyerly and logistical difficulties. Since the state maintains no centralized list of former felons, for example, it might be hard to identify them or even to distinguish, say, between violent and nonviolent ex-offenders.
    Last week, a federal appeals court in Washington state, citing racial disparities in the justice system, ruled that imprisoned felons must be allowed to vote. While laws vary among states—most still deny voting rights until convicts have fulfilled their prison sentences and probations—only Virginia and Kentucky are so extreme as to bar former felons from the polls until and unless the governor approves their petition to restore that right.
    Although Mr.Kaine and his predecessor, Mark R. Warner, have approved the vast majority of petitions by former felons seeking to recover their voting rights, the troublesome rules mean that in practice only a few thousand such applications are submitted each year. Gov. -elect (已当选但未上任的州长) Robert F. McDonnell says he would expedite the process for nonviolent former felons. That’s laudable. But even nonviolent exconvicts like Ms. McDaniel, who have worked hard, rebuilt their lives and done all the state has asked of them, must wait three years after completing their punishments before they are eligible even to apply for the restoration of their voting rights. That is nothing short of a scandal.
What can we conclude from the last paragraph?
选项 A、The number of felons to restore the civil rights is limited.
B、Ms. McDaniel felt disgraceful, since she had been heroin addicted for twenty years.
C、It is impossible for Virginia to give voting rights to ex-felons.
D、Many lawyers are working hard for people’s democratic rights.
答案A
解析 推理判断题。根据题干提示定位到最后一段。由该段第一句可知，繁琐的规则意味着每年实际上只有数千份这样的申请被提交，恢复选举权的人数寥寥无几，所以[A]正确。[B]“McDaniel曾是个瘾君子，这让她蒙羞”，是文章的背景，故排除；[C]“弗吉尼亚州的前重罪犯不可能恢复选举权”，过于绝对，故排除；由本段第二句可知，州长致力于恢复前重罪犯的选举权，[D]“很多律师致力于保护人们的民主权力”，与原文意思不符，故排除。
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