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State lawmakers passed this week, which expands upon voting rights for felons, in some cases before they have completed all the requirements of their sentence upon release from prison, while still in probation. Sen. Ann Rivers of the 18th district joined the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH to discuss why she’s against the bill.

“This has been the ongoing march, and I have no doubt that soon there will be a bill that allows felons in prison to vote,” Rivers said. “But here’s the real problem: There has been a lot of movement to release people into their homes to complete their debt to society. So you could have someone who’s a felon, who still has a couple of years left on their sentence, and they get to do it from the comfort of their own home. Maybe with an ankle monitor, maybe without.”

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“So what you’re doing here is a complete relaxation of our criminal justice system, and I feel like it’s going to create just a less safe environment for all of us,” she added.

Rivers says she attempted to introduce an amendment dealing with sexual predators, but it was blocked.

“Here’s the worst part to me: So we have individuals — and this is the amendment that I tried to run, but the Democrats were so afraid of this amendment that they asked the lieutenant governor to rule it out of scope — they did not want to vote that sexually violent predators should not be allowed to vote,” she said.

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“Somehow, the Democrats think that the right to vote is more important, and this will actually prevent them from participating in the terrible crime that they that they engage in, which is laughable to me that you would even assert that,” Rivers said.

As Jason suggested, “Democrats aren’t doing this because they actually care about the right to vote, they’re doing this because they think these people will vote for them.”

“I think that there’s a desperation to recruit folks into the Democrat Party,” Rivers responded. “They’ve got to start looking under every rock and, sadly, sexually violent predators — that’s just exactly where they hide out, is under the rocks — and so that’s where we’re going with this, and it’s really heartbreaking.”

Listen to the Jason Rantz Show weekday afternoons from 3 – 6 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (or HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here