Felon disenfranchisement didn't begin under Scott and won't end under his successor. It's a very popular policy.
Obviously Rick Scott didn't start it (nobody said he did) but he reversed the automatic restoration process started under Crist. And what a drop too, going from 150,000 restorations under Crist to, based on current projections, let's say 800 under Scott. That's a drop of over 99%.
Felony disenfranchisement probably won't be ended until Congress or the courts overturn it, until then it's just going to be states moving individually towards automatic restorations and the few states with gubernatorial control over the process like Iowa and Florida will unfortunately move back and forth between policies with different Governors. Even if it's not ended at once, there's a big difference between an average of tens of thousands of restorations a year versus an average of one or two hundred restorations a year.
For popularity, I really doubt it's going to be popular to the point that there's going to be major opposition to restoring the voting rights to former/ex-felons who aren't even in prison anymore (
a category that represents 85% of Florida's felony disenfranchisements). National polls show 52-80% support for restoring voting rights in that situation
depending on the specific type of felony:
I'd be surprised if the Florida numbers differ that much.
