State Lawyers Say Judges Ruling Will Nullify Florida Law Restoring Ex-felon's Voting Rights

[turbinetree]

The reality here is a familiar one. If Republicans can figure out a way to suppress the vote of people more likely to vote for Democrats, not to mention suppress the votes of African Americans and other people of color, they’ll do it.
By Meteor Blades

A federal judge ruled in October that it is unconstitutional for Florida to make ex-felons who have completed their sentences pay fines, legal fees, and restitution before having their voting rights restored under an amendment that took effect in January. The state’s lawyers are now arguing that if that ruling is allowed to stand, the entire law will be nullified, and ex-felons will be right back where they were before the amendment was passed—permanently barred from voting unless a merciful governor can be persuaded to restore their rights case by case.

Since it became a state in 1845, Florida has barred felons from voting. The law has been slightly altered since then, notably after the Civil War and in 1968, after the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act were passed. But until 2007, ever more Floridians convicted of felonies were barred for life from voting. Their only hope was personally seeking gubernatorial clemency, which was rarely given.

That year, Republican (later Democrat) Gov. Charlie Crist managed to get the legislature to pass a law giving ex-felons who had finished their sentences the right to vote if the Parole Commission agreed. Excluded were convicted murderers and sex offenders. Ultimately, about 155,000 ex-felons got their voting rights back. But then the new Republican governor, Rick Scott, reversed that approach in 2011, adding a five-year waiting period before any ex-felon could apply for reinstatement of their voting rights. From 2011 to 2018, a piddling 3,000 applications were approved.

Consequently, in the 2016 election, a study showed that 1.7 million Floridians were permanently disenfranchised because of the felony law, 10.43% of the state’s population, the highest rate in the United States. At the time, 23.3% of black people couldn’t vote in Florida because of the law. How many of those people were turned into felons because of endemic injustices in the legal system is unknown but surely not insignificant.

https://crooksandliars.com/2019/12/state-lawyers-say-judges-ruling-will

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. Repubs hate it when people vote, they know that they would lose 85% of all races they are

in if they were not stealing elections every time.

[uponit7771]

5. Republican pols are no longer interested in democracy. They can't win, their ideals overall have...

... rejected

[FM123]

2. We thought having Scott as governor was bad until we got DeSantis.

And to think we could have had a Governor Andrew Gillum.

[crickets]

3. K&R for visibility

[csziggy]

4. The judge seems to have a problem with this stance

“If you really want to comply with the Constitution and let everyone who’s eligible to vote vote, pretty easy,” the judge said. “You put in place a constitutional system, it won’t matter if they (plaintiffs) like it or not. What you can’t do is to run out the clock so that people who are eligible to vote don’t get to vote in the March primary or, more importantly, in the presidential election.”
https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2019/12/04/does-desantis-want-to-void-amendment-4-his-lawyers-suggest-yes-he-does/

(At very end of the Tampa Bay article.)

Obviously the people of Florida who voted for this amendment intended that ex-cons who had served their sentence be allowed to vote. The Republicans currently in charge of the state government don't want them to vote - ever. One of the problems are the requirements for writing amendments to be voted on is that they have to be clear and short. This makes it very difficult to write one short enough to cover all the contingencies normally covered by laws.