In an attempt to share more of the stories from former felons across the Commonwealth, we’re presenting a series of short interviews every few weeks on our blog. 

A couple of weeks ago, Jason Smith, 32, from Elizabethtown succeeded in regaining the right to vote and plans on voting for the first time in the election this November. 

But it wasn't an easy path getting there, he told us. 

"When I was 18, I got caught with ½ ounce of Marijuana and an improperly stowed handgun in my car, and that was enough to put me in jail with a felony.  I got put in with some pretty hardened criminals and gang members, which didn't exactly help me in turning my life around.  To be honest, I looked to some of the older guys as mentors then and they weren't very good role models.  I’m not blaming anybody for my own choices, but it was a bad path to get on."

"After I became a parent, though, I decided that I really need to turn my life around.  It brought everything into focus for me.  But my choices are really limited by my past."

"I went to college and did really well in school, though, learning to be a chemical dependency abuse counselor.  I tell people that I got a PHD in the street and then sharpened that to a point with a college education.  In all of that, I've learned a lot that I can use to really help people." 

"After I realized I could apply to get my voting rights back through a partial pardon from the Governor, I knew I had to try.  Because being silent in this Democracy and having my kids be silenced too by extension didn't seem right." 

"I applied to get my rights back and then followed up by phone every couple of days, but never heard back." 

"Finally, I visited the court in person and asked about my case.  They claimed that I had a failure to appear to court offense on my record, but I knew that wasn't right.  When I contested it, they told me that I'd probably have to get a lawyer."

Jason pushed back and stubbornly waited in the office until he could convince someone to take the time to look into it more deeply.  Eventually, they found that the records of the Jason Smith they had on file belonged to a man with a different birthday, so Jason's application had stopped because of something another Jason Smith did. 

"Admittedly, it's a pretty common name.," Jason says, laughing.  Still, he notes that most people wouldn't have been persistent enough to push their way through a snag like that. 

"I'm pretty bull-headed, really," Jason said.  “I have a great education and I was willing to really follow-up on my application, but there’s people who don’t have my bullheadedness or luck and I'm afraid they’re not getting their rights back."

And indeed, over 120,000 Kentuckians haven't been able to navigate the process that Jason went through, but he's dedicated to helping them too. 

"After I got my right to vote back, I posted the certificate on Facebook and a few other people approached me to see if I could help them get their rights back.  I'm helping a few through the process right now."

He also spent some time looking for organizations that work on Voting Rights and discovered KFTC by finding a news story about our Voting Rights Rally in Frankfort earlier this year and managed to blow up one of the images big enough that he could make out the letters "KFTC."

“I have a loud enough voice on my own to get my rights back," said Jason.  "A lot of people don’t, but KFTC helps other people to have a loud voice and I want to be a part of that.  I've never done anything small im my life and I'm looking forward to doing something big with this."  

Dana and her son Stockton

As a mother, I’m fed up with the questionable choices made by the leaders who are entrusted to serve and protect their citizens. As a resident of Kentucky, I need to know that our leadership is willing to invest in the life that my son will have here. I need to know that when he’s old enough to go to school, he’ll have every opportunity to learn and succeed as well as his friends in Maryland and his cousins in California.

And I need to know that the air he breathes and the water he drinks is just as safe here as it is anyplace else and that he will experience a community in which people are treated fairly and justly.

Three little pieces of news led me to believe that perhaps a change had come to the Commonwealth and that we were on our way to a Kentucky I could be proud of. First, our elected officials started echoing Rep. Jim Wayne’s call for a comprehensive tax overhaul. Second, some House Republicans proposed a plan to expand the sales tax to a few of our untaxed services. Third, after years of watching our children’s class sizes swell, our teachers’ pay fails to keep up, our justice system and health services leave more and more people behind, and our colleges become unaffordable, even Senate President David Williams admitted that we need new revenue.

These three little pieces have allowed me to think that a positive change would come to our state. Like many Kentuckians, I was hopeful about the likelihood of real reforms.

Unfortunately, however, the closed doors that hid away the negotiations among House, Senate and executive leadership also prevented them from hearing the call for change coming from across the state. So instead, we get a plan to raise the cigarette tax by 30 cents, a retail sales tax on alcohol and deep budget cuts.

That’s the plan that’s supposed to save the day?

The legislature has a short memory. As easy as it is to blame the severity of Kentucky’s budget needs on the economic crisis, it isn’t accurate to do so. We knew about the revenue shortfall last year, but the legislature didn’t do anything about it except make another round of budget cuts, some deeper than the three rounds of cuts before that.

And although Gov. Beshear acted surprised to learn of that shortfall, the legislators knew better. The legislature-commissioned Fox Report confirmed back in 2001 that Kentucky’s tax system was out of date and could not sustain a basic level of services. Years of bad choices have left us with chronically underfunded programs, unaffordable higher education, abandoned school programs and unenforced environmental laws.

The legislature, once again, has made a big mistake. We now have a tax structure that asks the lowest income-earners to contribute about 10 percent of their income to state and local taxes, and asks the wealthiest to contribute not even 6 percent.

It’s the low- and middle-income earners — not our state’s wealthiest, with incomes above $300,000 —who are being hurt the most by our economic recession. Balancing our budget on their backs has never been fair, and now it seems especially unwise. Why aren’t we moving toward solutions that make our tax structure more balanced and, therefore, more sound?

Instead of adding some patchwork taxes that, in their weakness, will do very little for the public good, our elected officials could have moved us closer to a tax structure that reflects our values of fairness and cooperation.

Where’s the real revenue reform that the Commonwealth so badly needs?

Our taxes fit into the old trend. They are relics of a time when people bought into the falsity of small government connoting efficient government. Continuing to move in this direction will dig us deeper into the situation we are in right now, suffering from unemployment, extractive industries and facilitating policies that don’t work.

We all want our state to be efficient. But we won’t make it efficient by continuing the practices that make it ineffective. Our state government can only be efficient if it is able to do the work that we have charged it to do — help us protect and educate ourselves so that we can all realize our potential to succeed. Efficiency takes some investment. Our leaders can choose to support these investments, or they can choose — as they have — to only do what makes our budget legal.

I want our leaders to make better choices. I want them to invest in a better Kentucky.

All year, KFTC’s non-partisan Voter Empowerment campaign has had a tremendous presence and impact all across the Commonwealth, but this has been especially true in the last two months leading to the General Election on November 6^th.

Our fingerprint was everywhere – from Northern Kentucky to Western Kentucky, Central Kentucky, Louisville, and many area in Eastern Kentucky.  This campaign may have seen more quality ground work in communities spread all across the state than anything KFTC has taken on since the Broad Form Deed campaign in 1988. 

Everywhere we went, we registered voters, talked to people about issues that are important to them, and provided non-partisan information about where candidates stood on issues.  In many ways, that’s a simple concept for a campaign, but the effect it’s had on our Democracy seems to be huge. 

Members in Bowling Green staked spaces at a local coffee shop and a local grocery store and turned their homes into GOTV (Get Out The Vote) centers.  They spoke with voters they'd met in door-to-door walks, on WKU's campus, on the community college's campus, and even at the local grocery store.  They turned out voters, coordinated rides to the polls, and made sure that people had everything they needed to get out and vote.

In response to a great Springfield visit days before the election by KFTC members and former felon spokesperson Tayna Fogle, Deacon Gus Cooper said, "Tayna Fogle primed Springfield to vote by talking with people about her own experiences with getting her voter rights restored.  I know she moved people, and I know that because she was here, and because she talked about her own struggles and how important it's been for her to vote, people who probably don't usually vote, voted on Tuesday."

In Central Kentucky, members registered close to 1,000 voters at dozens of community events, then called thousands of fellow KFTC members, voters we’ve registered and people who’ve signed petitions to remind them to vote and help eliminate obstacles that might prevent them from voting. 

On Election Day itself, 25-30 Central Kentucky members helped connect people with 40 rides to the polls, passed out election information at local grocery stores, campuses, and in downtown Lexington, and even ran a Sound Car around town to remind people to vote through a large speaker system. 

University of Kentucky students played an especially strong role this year, leading a voter registration and mobilization effort on campus with tabling after tabling, but also special fun events such as the Concert For The Commonwealth that brought many students out to learn about issues and the election in a way that was a lot of fun.  “It’s just incredible what we’ve managed to accomplish this year,” UK KFTC Co-Coordinator Matt Harmin remarked at a KFTC Election Returns party late on Election Day. “It’s empowering and exciting to imagine what we can do next year.”

Northern Kentucky Voter Mobilization work focused on raising awareness of Restoration of Voting Rights for Former Felons.  We got hundreds of people to sign postcards to restore voting rights, then contacted those same people again, asking them to use their right to vote if they had it.  It seemed to be an especially strong way to connect with voters there.

Eastern Kentucky chapters also made a big difference in their communities.  In Harlan and Perry counties, for example, we had phone banks and Election Day events like passing out voter guides at the Catholic Church food pantry, Southeast Community College, and even sent some along with chicken dinner deliveries as part of a local social club. 

"I really enjoyed making phone calls because I feel like it made a difference, especially with the people who weren't sure where to vote  or if they were going to vote; they really didn't know who to contact… Too many people don't vote.  We lose our voice when people do that.  I'm afraid  if
more people don't exercise their right to vote, we'll lose it,”  said Theresa Banks, new member from Harlan County.

We contacted hundreds of Eastern Kentuckians who signed our petitions through outreach at the community colleges, the local high schools, local festivals, and door-to-door conversations in low-income housing developments.

"I thought it was fun.  It was fun to call people and learn about  getting to vote since I'm not old enough yet.  I got to pass out voter guides to people and learn about why people vote and how they decide who to vote for," said Deven Nantz, an 8^th grader and new Harlan County KFTC member who joined KFTC on Election Day

In Louisville and Madison County work also was intense with community events, voter mobilization calls, and great ground work. 

One especially strong resource provided by KFTC across the state in this Election was our Voter Guide.  We asked all 12 candidates running for statewide office to answer a series of questions on their stances, then published 10,000 copies of those answers, along with other useful information and distributed this far and wide. 

KFTC also made a lot of contacts through email and other electronic means, sending voter mobilization and education emails to more than 10,000 recipients encouraging them to visit our election web site,  www.KentuckyElection.org. Also, through Facebook, 2,000 KFTC supporters pledged to vote on Election Day.

Looking ahead to the 2008 Election, when there will be a Presidential election, Mitch McConnell’s US Senate seat will be up, and there will be many Kentucky legislative races across the state, KFTC members are evaluating what we did well and what can be done better in our Voter Empowerment work.  We plan on building a larger and larger critical base of informed and motivated voters year after year to have a greater and greater fundamental impact on how Elections are won.  Next year will be an important year for this campaign and KFTC members are looking forward to the challenge.