This story was initially printed by Jail Journalism Challenge and is reprinted right here underneath a Inventive Commons license. This story is a part of Locked Out, a particular collection from PJP about voting, politics, and democracy behind bars. Click on right here to learn extra.
I used to be incarcerated for greater than eight years in Florida. I’ve been free for 18 months and only recently bought the bug to vote once more. Downside was, I didn’t know if I used to be eligible to register. I wasn’t debriefed on the matter once I left jail, and I’d heard various things from completely different folks. Some stated: “Felons can’t vote in Florida. Ever.” Whereas others claimed: “You possibly can vote so long as you’re performed along with your sentence.”
I wanted steering. And clearly I wasn’t the one one.
A brand new proposal by the Florida Division of Elections seeks to finish confusion round restoration of voting rights. If handed, the replace to its current advisory opinion course of would supply folks with felony convictions the possibility to request a proper opinion stating definitively whether or not their voting rights have been restored. In so doing, it would make clear an advanced state statute that governs the method of reinstating voting rights for previously incarcerated folks.
“We wished to determine a easy query: Whose job is it to find out voter eligibility?” Desmond Meade, government director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, informed Spectrum Information 13 in August in help of the proposal.
Confusion Over the Regulation
The state statute in query, SS 98.0751, dictates that for all crimes aside from homicide or intercourse offenses, restoration of voting rights is contingent upon sentence completion, together with parole or probation and the satisfaction of all court-ordered fines and costs. Individuals convicted of homicide or intercourse offenses should search extra permission within the type of clemency from a state-appointed board.
However this alone doesn’t definitively reply the query of eligibility. Many individuals will not be even conscious of all of the fines they owe post-incarceration, not to mention the offense-specific pointers specified by the statute.
Meade stated the proposed course of, together with a particular kind, would affirmatively tackle these points. He added, “The opposite factor, which I believe is large, is that it offers safety for folks towards” being arrested for voter fraud.
Forty-one previously incarcerated folks have been arrested in 2022 and 2023 for voter fraud in Florida, based on Southern Poverty Regulation Middle. A minimum of a few of them had tried to vote based mostly on sincere misunderstandings of the state statute—but their prosecutions proceeded.
In response, some critics charged that Gov. Ron DeSantis and state Republicans have been intentionally suppressing the voting rights of felons.
“As an alternative of fulfilling its position to allow Floridians to vote, the state has made it harder, which is anti-democratic,” stated Courtney O’Donnell, a senior employees legal professional for voting rights with the Southern Poverty Regulation Middle, in an article posted on the group’s website.
Florida does certainly make it onerous for felons to vote. A 2023 truth sheet by The Sentencing Challenge states that Florida disenfranchises almost 1.5 million folks with felony convictions, greater than some other state within the nation.
A Historical past of Controversy
The newest saga within the battle over felony disenfranchisement in Florida started heating up in 2018.
That’s the yr voters within the state authorised Modification 4, which robotically restored voting rights to anybody with felony convictions—minus these convicted of homicide or intercourse offenses—upon launch from jail. DeSantis opposed the measure. Not even a yr later, because of legislative help by his fellow Republicans, DeSantis signed SS 98.0751 into legislation.
Authorized battles ensued. Opponents of the invoice, together with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), stated it successfully instituted a “ballot tax,” whereby solely those that may pay may vote, echoing comparable makes an attempt from the Jim Crow period.
DeSantis stated the measure was a safeguard towards giving “violent felons” sure societal advantages “with out regard to the needs of the victims.”
Finally, the struggle reached the U.S. Supreme Courtroom, which in 2020 determined towards intervening in a lower-court ruling that upheld the brand new legislation. In a dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the legislation “prevents 1000’s of in any other case eligible voters from collaborating in Florida’s main election just because they’re poor.”
Transferring Ahead
SS 98.0751 is the legislation of the land for the foreseeable future. In my case, as soon as I did my homework, the registration course of in the end went easily. Nonetheless, I credit score this to my relative privilege in being resourceful sufficient to conduct such analysis and pay my fines, coupled with my not being convicted of homicide or a intercourse crime. Sadly, many others aren’t so fortunate.
The particular opinion course of proposed by the Florida Division of Elections just isn’t anticipated to enter impact earlier than the Oct. 7 deadline to register to vote within the fall election, based on CBS Information Miami.
For extra info on voting in Florida, go to the web site of the supervisor of elections in your county or myfloridaelections.com. You can even assessment this truth sheet from the ACLU of Florida.
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Michael Anguille, Jail Journalism Challenge
is an award-winning author and the chief director of the SPJ-PJP Stillwater Awards, which honors excellence in jail journalism. He served 8.5 years within the Florida Division of Corrections. |
