The public imagination is nothing if not vivid. From the histrionic tenor of the opposition surrounding Gov. Tom Vilsack’s executive order to automatically restore the voting rights of felons once their sentences are completed, you’d think he was flinging open the prison doors and freeing thousands of dangerous prisoners to pillage and plunder law-abiding Iowans. Or that the estimated 80,000 people who’ll now be automatically eligible to register to vote will form a bloc and elect thugs to public office. Or that the governor’s Fourth of July action was a liberal coup d’état pulled off neatly under the guise of letting freedom ring for every citizen, but whose true purposes were to swell Democrats’ numbers to the point that Iowa becomes a solid blue state and to ensure the Iowa Caucuses retain their first-in-the-nation status (as if that were a bad thing that’s good only for Democrats).

Those scenarios range from absurd to paranoid. More absurd yet was a public policy that stripped felons – whether convicted of serious crimes like murder or of lesser offenses like drunken driving – of their voting rights for life. Iowa had one of the most punitive disenfranchisement laws in the country, and was one of only five states – Alabama, Florida, Kentucky and Virginia are others – still thinking in such draconian terms.

What that law said about Iowa isn’t flattering. Screw up here, buddy, and we’ll make you pay one way or another for life. Driver’s license revocations and other post-release conditions that can become barriers to employment, though perhaps necessary, already make it difficult for offenders to reintegrate into society, but to strip them of the right most closely associated with citizenship and valued as precious by most Americans makes Iowa appear parochial, unforgiving and ruthless.

And bigoted. Data from the Iowa Criminal Justice Information System shows that more than 25 percent of the disenfranchised felons in 2004 were minorities. Of them, 19.2 percent were African-American, 4.8 percent Hispanic and 1.4 percent Native American. Another study by Right to Vote, a campaign to end felon disenfranchisement, says Iowa, with only a 2 percent African-American population, has the highest rate of racial disparity among disenfranchised felons in the nation.

Vilsack is catching plenty of static for sidestepping the Legislature. Another way of looking at it is that he took a pragmatic approach that, for all the talk about politicking, actually removes much of the partisan bickering and posturing that often prevents officials from doing the right thing. Who can blame Vilsack? He’s been dogged in court by Republican legislative leaders over one issue or another since he was first elected in 1998, and he outwitted them this time with an executive order that appears to be lawsuit-proof. That has to sting Republicans. Plus, the same Republicans who rushed, albeit unsuccessfully, to get the death penalty debated in the Legislature after the kidnapping, rape and murder of 10-year-old Jetsetta Gage were in no mood to consider legislation that might make them appear soft on crime.

Politics is one mechanism for change, and when meaningful reform such as voter re-enfranchisement occurs, the party initiating it gets the spoils. Don’t think for a moment that Republicans wouldn’t seize the same opportunity if it were available, or they won’t play on an emotion or two in next year’s effort to get the death penalty reinstated in Iowa. It’s how the game is played, and both sides are equally skilled at playing it.

However voter re-enfranchisement was accomplished, it was the morally correct thing to do. Rather than slapping victims of felony crimes in the face, as some critics charge, the executive order sends a message that Iowa does not tamper lightly with civil rights, that leaders recognize the importance of balancing scales that are tipped against minorities and economically disadvantaged Iowans, and that we believe in second chances.