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Published on Saturday, October 04, 2008
By LA Daily News Staff Writer
RICHMOND, Va. - Undaunted by the heat, James Bailey spent his late-summer afternoons walking Virginia's bleakest neighborhoods on the hunt for ex-cons - each a potential voter who might cast the decisive ballot in this hotly contested state.
Finding them isn't the hard part. It's getting them to admit that a past mistake has kept them from the ballot box.
"People are really, really reluctant to say, `I lost my rights to vote,"' Bailey said of his quest, which continued in the run-up to Monday's registration deadline in Virginia for the November election.
Nationally, there are roughly 4 million released felons whose convictions have cost them the right to vote at least temporarily, if not permanently.
To return to the ballot box, felons must negotiate suffrage laws that vary from state to state, in many cases working with election officials who can be both unfamiliar with the law and hostile to former convicts seeking to register
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