Our bill to Restore Voting Rights for most Former Felons who have served their debt to society has come a long way in recent years.  Let's take a moment to take a step back and plan the road ahead which includes a lot of action in 2011, but really critical organizing in 2010 to get ready for it.

In the simplest terms, we have seven steps in front of us:

1. Build Grassroots Power - Develop leaders, collect postcards and petitions, register voters, build alliances, and educate the public about Voting Rights.

2. House Committee - Pass the House Elections and Constitutional Amendments Committee in the first few weeks of the legislative session in February of 2011.

3. House Floor - Pass a 60% super-majority vote of the House in February of 2011. 

4. Senate Committee - Pass the Senate State and Local Government Committee in February or March of 2011.  We will need to put a lot of pressure on Senate leadership and Committee chair Damon Thayer to accomplish this. 

5. Senate Floor - Pass a 60% super-majority vote of the Senate in February or March of 2011.

(March 2011-November 2012. Secure in the knowledge that we will be on the ballot in 2012, we'll create a massive ground campaign to organize communities across the state and educate and mobilize leading up to election day.  We will also use the two primary elections and 2011 General Elections to build our collective electoral skills and power.)

6. General Election - November 6th, 2012.  We’ll need around 991,000 yes votes to ratify our constitutional amendment, including 50,000 people KFTC will mobilize directly, along with tens of thousands more mobilized by our allies.

7. Former Felons Vote – Starting in 2014.  Our goal is ultimately for many of Kentucky’s 186,000 currently disenfranchised citizens to get out and take-part in our democracy – to provide more representation for low-income and people of color communities and to generally make our democracy stronger.  To this end, we need to include former felons in the campaign and build ownership at every step.

Note that we’ve gotten through the third step in three consecutive years and have laid the groundwork to get much further in the Senate.

Almost all of these steps are in 2011, but the first and continuous step of building grassroots support is absolutely necessary and it’s something we have to be doing now in all of our communities across the state, particularly in key Senate areas to help in steps 4 and 5.