after Obama’s election, Governor Rick Scott welded together a series of guidelines that required a fourteen-year waiting period after sentencing requirements were completed before a person could even petition the governor to restore his or her voting rights. The process, by design, is cumbersome, unduly harsh, and, not surprisingly, since Scott’s tenure in office, led to only 8 percent of the requests gaining approval—as compared to 93 percent in Iowa and 86 percent in Kentucky.21
