CHEYENNE - Gov. Dave Freudenthal plans to sign into law today a measure that would allow first-time, nonviolent felons to get their voting rights restored five years after completing their sentence or probation period for the conviction.

Senate File 65 , sponsored by Sen. Keith Goodenough, D-Casper, cleared both chambers of the Legislature last week. Freudenthal has scheduled a signing ceremony for that legislation as well as the budget bill at 10:30 a.m. today.

The bill would remove Wyoming from the list of seven states with the strictest provisions for permanently stripping all felons of their voting rights, according to Goodenough.

He said the issue is one of fairness.

"When you become a felon, you lose a whole range of rights, including the right to vote, so this is a partial restoration of the rights that are lost, based on good behavior," he said.

When campaigning door-to-door, Goodenough has met many felons who therefore can no longer vote but who express an interest in doing so.

He said he has tried to help some of them get their voting rights back through Wyoming's only current method of allowing it, which is with an application to the governor, who has sole discretion in granting or rejecting the request.

"If the governor's not sympathetic, nobody gets their voting rights back, and I believe it's important, because it's a way to bring people back into the community," Goodenough said.

Under terms of SF 65 , the state parole board would be required to grant applications of nonviolent felons to regain their voting rights if it has been five years since they completed the prison term or probation for their felony convictions and they have not been convicted of any other felonies.

An exception to the one-time offender provision if the person has been convicted of multiple felonies based on the same occurrence or a related course of events.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. John Hanes, R-Laramie, said he supported the bill in part because he knows a couple of felons in his district who have reformed and who now wish they could vote.

"They've rehabilitated themselves, and they are responsible, income-earning family men who have really showed a high degree of responsibility, and they regret very much that they can't vote," Hanes said, adding that both are active in politics and government.

"I think when you have people in that category that they should be given an opportunity to participate when they have proven themselves," he said.

Goodenough said that if the new law, which takes effect July 1, works well, he would prefer to "liberalize it" to include people with multiple nonviolent felony convictions.

"When people are young, there may be a period of years where they do numerous foolhardy acts, but after that they may have a clean slate for 10 or 20 years, so I think those people ought to be included as well," he explained.

He said he would prefer to include people with multiple nonviolent felonies before considering whether to include violent felons in the new law.

Hanes said the possibility of including violent felons did not come up this year, and he is not ready to consider it at this point.