What could have been a major victory for progressive criminal justice reform in Colorado went horribly awry yesterday due to a devastating bureaucratic mixup: Colorado just tried restoring voting rights to 30,000 felons, but accidentally ended up giving Jared Fogle the right to vote 30,000 times instead.
Yikes. Someone is definitely getting fired for this.
According to sources, lawmakers in Colorado state government had reportedly worked for months to draft a well-intentioned bill that would return the right to vote to 30,000 disenfranchised felons. However, due to a series of clerical errors and administrative oversights, the 30,000 votes were all conferred to a single incarcerated felon: Noted pedophile and disgraced Subway spokesman Jared Fogle.
“With deep sadness and regret, I must inform you all that my administration has mistakenly endowed Jared Fogle with the legal right to cast 30,000 ballots in all local, statewide, and national elections, including the presidential election,” said Colorado governor Jared Polis during a press conference this morning in which he announced that the new law, through sheer bureaucratic negligence, guarantees Fogle the right to vote tens of thousands of times in every election for the rest of his life. “Since Colorado is a key swing state, there is a very real possibility that the next president of the United States could be single-handedly selected by Jared Fogle. I offer my sincerest apologies to the people of Colorado and the United States as a whole. I will not resign.”
This is absolutely terrible! While you’ve got to give Colorado major props points for making an effort to give convicted felons the right to vote, it’s inexcusable that their carelessness resulted in one of the nation’s most reviled fast food spokesmen and notorious sex offenders getting to vote 30,000 times in every election. Hopefully, Jared Fogle uses his enormous amount of votes responsibly! The future of government could very well be in his hands.
