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Felon voting in Florida, backed by the people, is curtailed by the elected

The Fulcrum
By The FulcrumMay 06, 2019
The Fulcrum
The Fulcrum staff.
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One of last fall's most consequential referendum results, Floridians' lopsided decision to restore voting rights to as many as 1.5 million felons, has been partially reversed at the state capital.

Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis will soon sign a measure creating an unsurmountable obstacle to the ballot box for thousands of convicts who have completed their sentences: They will be required to pay back fines and fees to the courts before heading to the polls.

"Basically, they're telling you, 'If you have money, you can vote. If you don't have money, you can't,'" Patrick Penn, who spent 15 years in prison for robbery and burglary, told The New York Times. "That's not what the people voted for."

The GOP-controlled state House cleared a compromise version of the proposal along party lines Friday. Under the final version, convicted felons could ask a judge to waive the financial obligations or repay them through community service.

The Republicans who dominate power in Tallahassee say some restrictions are needed to clarify implementation of the ballot measure, dubbed Amendment 4 and approved with 65 percent support in November. Civil rights organizations say the legislators are taking far too strict a view of what was meant by the language of the referendum, which said rights would be restored for felons "after they complete all terms of their sentence."

Florida says it has the largest number of people disenfranchised by their criminal records, and a disproportionate share are African-American and therefore mostly Democrats. But "political scientists who study voter registration in Florida have said that re-engaging previously disenfranchised felons into the democratic process takes time and effort, and that any increase in the state's voter rolls would be gradual and would probably follow existing trends in which most new voters in the state register without party affiliation," the Times noted.

Now Iowa and Kentucky are the only two states that forever bar people with a felony record from voting. Iowa's GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds proposed a constitutional amendment to give the franchise back to ex-cons but the idea died in this legislative session.


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Private Prisons and ICE Exploit Loopholes, Harm Communities

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While Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) terrorizes Black and brown communities with racial profiling, kidnappings, inhumane treatment, fatal abuse, and killings, private prison investors are asking how ICE can detain more people to increase their profits. Private prison corporations have long profited from immigration enforcement, but they are expecting a financial windfall under the current administration. These corporations are politically and financially situated to rapidly increase detention capacity and cash in on the president’s goal of deporting one million people per year. Stopping these corporations from lining politicians’ campaign coffers is a necessary first step in ensuring that our government is accountable to the people it serves, rather than the corporations it contracts with.

ICE and private prison corporations have long had a symbiotic relationship. Ninety percent of ICE's detainees were already being held in facilities owned or operated by private prison corporations before President Trump began his second term. CoreCivic and GEO Group, two of the largest private prison corporations that lead the multi-billion dollar industry, have been contracting with immigration enforcement for decades. By 2023, ICE contracts accounted for 43 percent of CoreCivic’s revenue and 30 percent of GEO Group’s revenue. The majority of each corporation’s lobbyists have held government positions, and GEO Group’s board of directors “has extensive links with ICE.” The relationship between private prisons and ICE is the embodiment of the “'revolving door’ between the federal government and the private sector.”

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As live sporting events go, nothing comes close to the World Cup. I was in the stands when South Africa, my birth country, hosted the event in 2010 after decades of exclusion from global athletics. In June of this year, I had a full-circle moment when South Africa played in the knockout rounds for the first time, and I stood with my two American sons, arms around them, singing South Africa's anthem — the only national anthem that weaves multiple languages into a single, unifying song. Later in the week, I was in the stands again, cheering Spain's win over Austria, a country to which my only connections are a brief holiday…and the fact that my mother's family fled from there during the Inquisition.

The magic of the World Cup is that everyone in the stands wears the flags and shirts of countries that are “theirs” in some way. For some, it’s where they were born; for others, where they live or where their ancestors hailed from. For some, it is simply a country they have adopted for the afternoon. It is impossible to know how deep a person’s connection runs simply by looking at them. And next to a person waving one team’s colors is a stranger, family member, or close friend supporting the opposing team—or wearing the jersey of a team that isn’t playing that day at all.

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