• Home
  • Opinion
  • Quizzes
  • Redistricting
  • Sections
  • About Us
  • Voting
  • Events
  • Civic Ed
  • Campaign Finance
  • Directory
  • Election Dissection
  • Fact Check
  • Glossary
  • Independent Voter News
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Voting>
  3. felons' voting rights>

Judge strikes down 'pay to vote' rule for felons in battleground Florida

Bill Theobald
May 25, 2020
Florida felon voting

Michael Monfluery is one of the ex-felons in Florida who would be able to vote under a federal judge's ruling issued on Sunday.

Zak Bennett/Getty Images

In the most significant victory for voting rights this year, a federal judge in Florida has held unconstitutional a new state requirement that felons pay their fines, fees and court costs before getting to vote again.

If the ruling, issued Sunday night by Judge Robert Hinkle in Tallahassee, survives after an expected appeal by the state, hundreds of thousands more Floridians would be able to vote this fall in the most populous swing state — which is famous for two decades of extremely narrow margins in big elections.

The ultimate impact of the decision will depend on several factors, including how successful voting rights advocates are in identifying these potential new voters and getting them registered and to the polls.


Research has shown that felons who get the franchise back after their release from prison are far more likely to register as Democrats. Marc Meredith, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, and a colleague found this to be true in researching the partisan allegiance of such voters in states including New York, New Mexico, North Carolina, Iowa, Rhode Island and Maine.

But while they may tend to be more Democratic, it is also true that they are also less likely to vote at all.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Nonetheless, Hinkle's decision is a watershed moment in a year when a central story about American democracy is whether access to the voting booth should be made easier or kept difficult — and most of those questions are being forced by lawsuits across the country.

In this case, the Republican-majority Legislature and GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis produced a law last year requiring felons to pay all their court-ordered financial obligations before registering — saying that was what constituted completion of their sentence. The measure was written after 65 percent of the state's voters in 2018 decided to restore voting rights for as many as 1.4 million felons who have completed prison, probation and parole, the largest single restoration of the franchise in the nation in a generation.

Hinkle's 125-page opinion called the law a "pay-to-vote system."

There's strong reason to believe the state's expected appeal would succeed at the next level, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, since that court has already rebuffed a similar but preliminary challenge in the case.

The court unanimously upheld a ruling last October by Hinkle temporarily blocking the law, in which he held that requiring felons to repay all of their fines and fees amounted to a poll tax. Poll taxes were used in the South as a way to bar poor black people from voting and were barred by a constitutional amendment in 1964

"Now, after a full trial on the merits, the plaintiffs' evidence has grown stronger," that the court costs are a de facto poll tax, Hinkle wrote in Sunday's ruling. He presided over an eight-day trial in April, held by teleconference because of the risk of the coronavirus.

Five different lawsuits filed on behalf of convicted felons and civil rights groups were consolidated into one.

In Sunday's decision, Hinkle ruled that felons can be required to pay what courts order them to, but only if they can afford it.

There was no immediate response from DeSantis, GOP Secretary of State Laurel Lee, or President Trump, who has in recent days been weighing in through Twitter on all the voting process changes he objects to.

One issue that clearly hurt the state's case was its inability to come up with a consistent and clear method for determining what is owed by each felon. Hinkle made reference to the issue several times during court hearings and mentioned it again in his ruling.

He noted that a professor working with a team of doctoral candidates attempted to determine how much a sampling of 153 felons owed and found inconsistencies in all but three of the cases they studied.

The exact number of people who might find their voting rights restored is also in dispute. Some estimate several hundred thousand. Others peg the figure at 774,000. Hinkle put the number at nearly 1 million. (The state constitutional amendment, known as Amendment 4, continues to deny the right to vote to murderers and sex criminals.)

Whatever the number, voting rights and criminal justice reform groups hailed the decision.

"This is a landmark victory for voting rights!" Danielle Lang of the Campaign Legal Center wrote in an email. CLC filed one of the lawsuits in behalf of three people with felony convictions.

"This ruling is not only a victory for our clients and voting rights activists in Florida, but is an important step towards dismantling financial barriers to the ballot box across the country," said Nancy Abudu, deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Florida's congressional and legislative primaries are in 12 weeks, and it's unclear whether any appeals could be resolved by then. The Supreme Court does not customarily hear new cases before October.

The state now has 29 electoral votes, more than any state except solidly blue California and traditionally red Texas, and it has been carried by the presidential winner six straight times — almost always by extraordinary narrow margins. George W. Bush's 537-vote margin, upheld by the Supreme Court in 2000, is the most famous, but Trump prevailed four years ago by only 113,000 votes out of 9.5 million cast — a margin of just 1 point over Hillary Clinton.

From Your Site Articles
  • Movement to restore felons' voting rights keeps growing, and in ... ›
  • GOP's win on Florida felon voting not the final word - The Fulcrum ›
  • If payments are required for voting, Florida should know what felons ›
  • Californians will decide whether to let parolees vote - The Fulcrum ›
  • Appeals court blocks ruling allowing Florida felons to vote - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Florida Voted to Give 1.4 Million Felons the Right to Vote. It Hasn't ... ›
  • Florida concedes it has no plan on felon voting ›
  • Florida Law Restricting Felon Voting Is Unconstitutional, Judge Rules ›
  • Florida felon voting rights case: Where it stands and how it could ... ›
felons' voting rights

Want to write
for The Fulcrum?

If you have something to say about ways to protect or repair our American democracy, we want to hear from you.

Submit
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

Reform in 2023: Leadership worth celebrating

Layla Zaidane

Two technology balancing acts

Dave Anderson

Reform in 2023: It’s time for the civil rights community to embrace independent voters

Jeremy Gruber

Congress’ fix to presidential votes lights the way for broader election reform

Kevin Johnson

Democrats and Republicans want the status quo, but we need to move Forward

Christine Todd Whitman

Reform in 2023: Building a beacon of hope in Boston

Henry Santana
Jerren Chang
latest News

Part IV: Reforming constitutional convention campaigns

J.H. Snider
20h

Winning GOP strategy in 2024 – back to business with immigration reform

Neil Hare
21h

Podcast: Separating news from noise

Our Staff
21h

Podcast: Deepening democracy in the states

Our Staff
27 January

Ask Joe: Fostering social activism

Joe Weston
27 January

With an eye on 2024, some states consider new protections for election workers

Barbara Rodriguez, The 19th
27 January
Videos

Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Our Staff

Video: Meet the citizen activists championing primary reform

Our Staff

Video: Veterans for Political Innovation - Who we are

Our Staff

Video: Want to fight polarization? Take a vacation!

Our Staff

Video: Kevin McCarthy is Speaker, but he's got a tough job ahead

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirst Friday End of Year

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Separating news from noise

Our Staff
21h

Podcast: Deepening democracy in the states

Our Staff
27 January

Podcast: How the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack impacted politics

Our Staff
26 January

Podcast: Why we misunderstand independent voters

Our Staff
25 January
Recommended
Part IV: Reforming constitutional convention campaigns

Part IV: Reforming constitutional convention campaigns

State
Winning GOP strategy in 2024 – back to business with immigration reform

Winning GOP strategy in 2024 – back to business with immigration reform

Big Picture
Podcast: Separating news from noise

Podcast: Separating news from noise

Podcasts
Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Video: We need more bipartisan commitment to democracy: Pennsylvania governor

Podcast: Deepening democracy in the states

Podcast: Deepening democracy in the states

Podcasts
Ask Joe: Fostering social activism

Ask Joe: Fostering social activism

Pop Culture