Florida Republicans are trying to thwart both justice and the will of the people
IN CLOSELY divided Florida, it is hard to imagine Democrats and Republicans agreeing on much of anything. But huge numbers of them did last November, when nearly 65 percent of Florida voters decided to let released felons cast ballots in future elections. This was supposed to be a landmark moment in the advancement of voting rights. Felon disenfranchisement in Florida was an 1868 relic devised after the Civil War to prevent African Americans from voting. According to an estimate from the Sentencing Project, the policy banned a fifth of African Americans in Florida from voting in 2016.
After last year’s referendum, headlines promised that more than 1 million people would finally get the right to vote again, the largest extension of voting rights in decades. Since then, felons who had paid their debt to society have been registering to vote and participating in local elections.
But Florida Republican lawmakers are pushing a bill that would make this great reenfranchisement substantially narrower than it seemed. The natural inference is that they worry that newly enfranchised ex-convicts, who are disproportionately African American, will mostly vote for Democrats. Republicans insist that politics is not their motivation. But their actions are still wrong.
The state constitutional amendment that voters approved says all released felons will have their voting rights restored, unless they are guilty of murder or a sexual offense, upon completion of their sentences. The amendment’s backers argue it needs no elaboration from the state legislature. A Florida House committee nevertheless approved a bill Tuesday that would crimp eligibility for reenfranchisement, targeting the poor, in particular.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/florida-republicans-are-trying-to-thwart-both-justice-and-the-will-of-the-people/2019/03/21/40882db4-4b47-11e9-93d0-64dbcf38ba41_story.html
