It's About Suppression, Con't

Florida Republicans are in full panic mode knowing that the state passed a constitutional referendum last year to restore voting rights to felons who have served their time, a move that would add potentially a million new voters to the rolls.

And the vast majority of those new voters would be black.

You can imagine the scent of flop sweat and fear in Tallahassee.  This week, Florida Republicans moved to start stripping black voters off the rolls in other ways, staring with a bill re- disenfranchising felons over costs and state fees.

A Florida House committee approved a bill addressing the rollout of Amendment 4 despite concerns that it would limit the number of former felons who could have their voting rights restored. 

Voting along party lines, Republicans advanced the measure, which would require felons pay back all court fees and costs before being eligible to vote, even if those costs are not handed down by a judge as part of the person’s sentence. 

That standard goes beyond the old system, which only required someone pay back restitution to a victim before applying to have their civil rights restored. And Democratic representatives and others blasted it. 

“It’s blatantly unconstitutional as a poll tax,” said Rep. Adam Hattersley, D-Riverview.

At issue was how broadly or narrowly to interpret the amendment, and whether the Legislature needs to do anything at all. 

Advocates of Amendment 4 believe no bill is needed, and that lawmakers are just meddling. Already, felons are registering to vote — and voting — across the state. 

But elections supervisors and others have said they want help interpreting the historic amendment, which Floridians passed last year. It allowed more than 1 million ex-felons to have their voting rights restored, except for those convicted of “murder” and “sexual offenses.” 

Committee chair Jamie Grant, R-Tampa, said he took the language explicitly at its word, and he pointed to testimony Amendment 4 lawyers gave to the Supreme Court. 

Nobody defined what “sexual offenses” meant, Grant said, so he included every felony sexual offense on the books, including prostitution and placing an adult entertainment store within 2,500 feet of a school. 

“There is absolutely zero significance to the term ‘felony sex,’” Grant said. "Had the language said ‘sex offender,' that would have meant something.” 

And he said he cited Amendment 4′s own advocates before the Supreme Court, who said completing someone’s sentence could include fees and court costs.

And he considered it offensive to consider the fines a poll tax. 

“To suggest that this is a poll tax inherently diminishes the atrocity of what a poll tax actually was,” Grant said. “All we’re doing is following statute. All we’re doing is following the testimony of what was presented before the Florida Supreme Court explicitly acknowledging that fines and court costs are part of a sentence.”

So by piling on loopholes and turning everything into a legal nightmare, Republicans would tie up the voting rights of hundreds of thousands for years, if not permanently.  That's how terrified they are, they know the Florida GOP will go the way of the Republican party in California, New York, and Illinois soon.  And with 2020 determining which party is in charge of redistricting, they have to do everything they can to kill this now or they will be wiped out next November.

And they know it.