John Raoux/AP Photo
Former felon Robert Eckford talks with reporters after registering to vote at the Orlando Supervisor of Elections office, January 2019.
In Eatonville, Florida, a recount confirmed that incumbent town councilman Tarus Mack beat challenger Marlin Daniels by one vote in the March 17 election in the country’s first incorporated black municipality.
Florida Rights Restoration Coalition Executive Director Desmond Meade knew that one returning citizen was newly eligible to vote in the small town near Orlando. “Not only did the vote count,” says Meade, “but [it was] the vote of a returning citizen who can make a difference in who wins or loses elections.”
For Meade, that’s proof positive of the importance of voting not only for returning citizens—the term for formerly incarcerated residents—but for the state itself, and anyone who thinks an individual’s decision doesn’t matter.
Coronavirus fears kept some Floridians from voting in person on March 17, but FRRC leaders encouraged returning citizens to use early voting and voting by mail to social distance and exercise their right to the franchise. As voting rights advocates like Meade look forward to the November general election, alternatives like voting by mail have assumed vital importance in assuring that returning citizens will be able to cast a ballot regardless of whether they can access a polling facility in person. Voting by mail does present myriad challenges, as many states are discovering, but for the people who continue to confront obstacles to voting in Florida, these procedures provide effective ways to exercise newly regained rights during an unprecedented public-health crisis.
Indeed, the biggest obstacle that returning Florida citizens encountered when they sought to vote was not COVID-19 or finding a polling place with the appropriate sanitary safeguards. It was the roster of fines and fees that returning citizens had to resolve or pay off before they could register to vote.
After nearly 65 percent of Floridians voted in 2018 to pass Amendment 4, which restored voting rights to about 1.4 million returning citizens, Republican state lawmakers moved quickly to devise another set of hurdles: fines and fees that former felons had to pay before they could register to vote. One set of fines was levied on returning citizens who’d been convicted of a specific group of offenses, and had to be paid off before an individual could register to vote. A second set covered certain administrative fees that helped fund court operations and other costs.
In February, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a preliminary injunction issued by a lower court blocking a section of the Florida law that prohibited returning citizens from voting because of an inability to pay fines and fees. Attorneys for the plaintiffs believe that a federal court may strike down the entire measure when the case goes to trial in April. A January Florida State Supreme Court nonbinding advisory ruling had backed up state lawmakers, asserting that individuals had to meet financial requirements before they could regain their voting rights.
According to Meade, retuning citizens do have the option of petitioning the courts to permanently waive the fines and fees or to modify them so that a person can work on satisfying the financial obligation to the state but still be able to register to vote. The FRRC found that people who contacted the advocacy group for assistance owed an average of $1500.
More than 40 percent of Florida’s returning citizens are African American.
A similar debate over restoring voting rights for retuning citizens continues in Iowa, the last remaining state where people with any felony conviction are permanently barred from voting, short of a gubernatorial appeal. Republican Governor Kim Reynolds and a majority of Iowans support a constitutional amendment to automatically restore voting rights to returning citizens, but state senators want those individuals to pay restitution to victims before regaining voting rights.
In Kentucky, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear restored voting rights to about 140,000 formerly incarcerated people last year, minus the onerous fines and fees that were implemented in Florida. Nevertheless, Republican state lawmakers who dominate both chambers of the Kentucky General Assembly have proposed a voter ID requirement that features a narrow list of acceptable forms of identification that would be required to vote in November. (Some people convicted of more serious crimes would be subject to more stringent tests to regain their voting rights.) Before Beshear’s restoration, about a quarter of the people who could not vote because of a past conviction were African American. The bill is pending in the Kentucky legislature. (Kentucky does not use early voting and has a low rate of return for ballots that can be mailed in.)
Virginia’s Democratic Governors Terry McAuliffe and Ralph Northam together have restored voting rights to about 200,000 formerly incarcerated people since 2016.
After the turbulent fight to pass Florida’s Amendment 4, Meade of the FRRC, himself a returning citizen who was once homeless, says that it is “imperative” that returning citizens in Florida and across the country vote not only in the presidential contest in November, but in every state and local election for the judges, state attorneys, sheriffs, and other officials who implement the criminal justice policies that affect their communities. “Even in the face of this coronavirus, there is still a sense of urgency to engage returning citizens,” says Meade. “We’ve been silent for so long.”
