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In Florida, who has the right to vote?
By Daryl L. Jones and Robert L. Moore | Commentary
Posted June 14, 2003
What does it take to permanently strip a U.S. citizen of his or her
rights?
In Florida, apparently, not much. According to Human Rights Watch, our
state has more citizens deprived of their voting rights than any other.
The bulk of those without voting rights in Florida are former felons.
These are people who have committed a crime, served their time in prison,
and are off probation. Forty states automatically restore the right to
vote to former felons who have exited the penal system. Florida is one of
only 10 states that do not.
Of a national total of 1,391,000 disenfranchised former felons, Florida,
with 436,900, is the home of almost one-third of these. In fact, no other
state has even half of Florida's total in this category.
Almost all of those stripped of the right to vote in Florida are citizens
of modest means who tend to vote Democratic. Because poor people are less
able to afford an adequate defense in court, the net effect is that more
than nine of 10 felony convictions result in a likely Democratic vote
being taken off the rolls.
Two trends have contributed significantly to the growing population of
disenfranchised Floridians and both are Republican-driven. The first is
the wave of legislation over the past 16 years that has reclassified
misdemeanors as felonies. During my (Daryl Jones') time on Florida's
Senate, several bills each year, almost all sponsored by Republicans,
turned misdemeanants into felons. These bills tended to target low-end
crimes mainly committed by citizens of modest incomes, i.e., likely
Democrats.
One such reclassification has resulted in welfare recipients being made
vulnerable to losing their voting rights if found guilty of fraud for not
reporting all income. In one Orlando case, a father whose 18-year-old
daughter worked part time at a fast-food restaurant was so charged for
failing to report her income.
The second trend that boosts the number of voteless citizens is the
increasingly difficult and expensive clemency process required to regain
the right to vote. Under the old rules, previous Democratic Govs. Reubin
Askew (1971-79) and Bob Graham (1979-87) merely processed most
applications for clemency. They secured the votes of two other Cabinet
members to restore voting rights for reformed and deserving former felons.
When Republican Bob Martinez became governor in 1987, he changed the
clemency rules to require a full-blown hearing before the seven-member
Cabinet. Some of these requirements were eased following the 2000 election
debacle, but thousands of applicants still must wait a year or more before
even being considered for clemency and most never succeed in regaining
their voting rights. Overall, policy changes since the 1980s have resulted
in skyrocketing numbers of low-income Floridians permanently losing their
voting rights. In fact, Human Rights Watch has determined that 31 percent
of black men are disenfranchised in Florida today.
We believe that nonviolent former felons deserve a voice in choosing the
officials who spend their tax dollars. The bipartisan National Commission
on Federal Electoral Reform, chaired by former Presidents Gerald Ford and
Jimmy Carter, also recommends that former felons be allowed to vote. And
no democracy in the world disenfranchises former felons in numbers
approaching those of Florida.
Not all disenfranchised voters are former felons, however. BBC reporter
Greg Palast has analyzed the "scrub lists" that were used to block
innocent black and Hispanic voters from the polls in Florida's 2000
election. Elections supervisors disenfranchised thousands of law-abiding
citizens whose names were only partial matches to names on the felon lists
provided by Gov. Jeb Bush's administration, as long as such criteria as
gender and race also matched. As a result, because John Fitzgerald
Jackson, a 40-year-old black man and a felon, was on the felon list,
Johnny Jackson, Jr., a 32-year-old non-felon, and also black, had his
voting rights taken away.
Defenders of Bush claim that cases like this were simply accidental, but
this is questionable given the large proportion of Democrats
disenfranchised by these "scrubbed" voter lists. As in the 2000 election,
the Legislature has again hired a firm to create scrub lists for the 2004
election.
Florida's ballooning growth in citizens without voting rights threatens to
add to our state's reputation for dubious elections.
Even more troubling than this is the apparent belief of Republican leaders
that protecting themselves from voters is more important than protecting
voters from the heavy hand of the state.
Daryl L. Jones is a former state senator and 2002 candidate for governor
of Florida. Robert L. Moore is a professor of anthropology at Rollins
College.
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