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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  58
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 does the word "disenfranchised" in the third paragraph mean?
选项 A、Voteless.
B、Latent.
C、Civil.
D、Violent.
答案A
解析 语义理解题。根据题干提示定位到第三段。由本段第一句话可知，联邦对前重罪犯的权利是如此的蔑视，由本段第三句可知，非裔美国人只占弗吉尼亚780万公民的五分之一，他们却被认为在不符合选举资格的公民中占了一半，因此根据语境可以判断该词是“剥夺选举权”的意思，所以[A]正确。[B]“隐藏的，潜伏的”、[C]“民事的”、[D]“暴力的”，均不符合题干要求，故排除。
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