The Last-Ditch Effort to Stop Florida's Century-Old Campaign of Racist Disenfranchisement

[babylonsister]

5 hours ago
The Last-Ditch Effort to Stop Florida’s Century-Old Campaign of Racist Disenfranchisement
Activists are raising money to help people convicted of felonies pay off their legal debts.
Abigail Weinberg


The Supreme Court struck a major blow against voting rights in Florida last week when it let stand a lower court decision that blocked as many as 1.4 million people who had previously been convicted of felonies from casting ballots until they pay all fines, court fees, and restitution. While the decision leaves intact a major financial barrier to voting, activists in the state are now banking on public support to help people pay down their legal debts and return to civic life.

The Supreme Court’s decision centers around Florida’s longstanding felon-disenfranchisement policy, which—as my colleague Ari Berman reported in 2018—has an ugly, racist history and can apply to people convicted of relatively minor crimes:

According to the Brennan Center for Justice, Florida disenfranchises more citizens than Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee combined. Ten percent of the state’s adult population is ineligible to vote because of a criminal record, including 1 in 5 African Americans. Florida counts 533 different infractions as felonies, including crimes like disturbing a lobster trap and trespassing on a construction site. “Come on Vacation, Leave on Probation” is an unofficial slogan…

After the Civil War, the white Confederates who still controlled Florida had a problem: The state had been forced to accept the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, which guaranteed equal rights for newly freed slaves, in order to rejoin the Union, and now black registered voters outnumbered white ones. White Floridians responded by adopting a constitution in 1868 that disenfranchised anyone with a felony conviction and added to the felony roster a variety of crimes they believed African Americans were likelier to be convicted of. One Republican leader said the law would keep the state from becoming “niggerized.” A decade later, more than 95 percent of people in Florida’s convict camps were African Americans.

In the same period, at least 12 other states—a third of the Union—adopted similar felon disenfranchisement laws. Before the advent of poll taxes and literacy tests, “felon voting restrictions were the first widespread set of legal disenfranchisement measures that would be imposed on African-Americans,” wrote Jeff Manza, Christopher Uggen, and Angela Behrens in the American Journal of Sociology.

In 2018, Florida voters overwhelmingly passed Amendment 4, a ballot initiative intended to restore voting rights to most ex-felons who have completed their sentences. But last year, the swing state’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed a law requiring ex-felons to pay all fines and court fees, which can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars, before becoming eligible to vote—a rule voting rights activists have likened to a modern-day poll tax.

more...

https://www.motherjones.com/2020-elections/2020/07/florida-felon-disenfranchisement/

[crickets]

1. It is a modern-day poll tax. No question. K&R for visibility.

[Chainfire]

2. So much for the people passing an amendment

The politicians and the courts know what the people wanted and voted for. The Republicans just aren't going to have it regardless.

[mitch96]

3. Another DU member had an article that stated people trying to pay off the "debt" could

not even get a correct cost? Three times and three different bills...WTF? So if you pay off one debt and if it's the wrong amount you are denied.......
m