Florida election officials said they are working to “streamline” a process that former prisoners can use to determine whether they are eligible to vote in the state.
The Florida Department of State is considering a proposal to formalize how people who have served time in prison for a crime can ask the state for clarification on whether they have met all the requirements to regain their right to vote. The rule change would ultimately have to be approved by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
In 2018, Florida voters approved a ballot proposal known as Amendment 4, which “would restore the right to vote to Floridians with a criminal conviction after they have completed all terms of their sentence, including probation.” The proposal excludes people who have committed a murder or sex offense.
But before Amendment 4 took effect, Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a law requiring returning citizens to serve their entire prison sentence – including paying any fees and fines – to regain their right to vote.
However, lawmakers have not created a system or database that Florida residents can use to determine how much they would have to pay to regain their rights.
“It’s really been challenging for – we’re saying about 700,000 – so hundreds of thousands of people who are affected,” said Desmond Meade, executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition. “And of course we can’t say for sure that every single person has tried to figure this thing out. But we know there are hundreds of thousands of people who just don’t know.”
Neil Volz, the coalition’s deputy director, said he has been working with state agencies for years to “create a better system that provides clarity to people who want their rights back within a certain time frame.”
“We’ve been trying for a long time to cut through the clutter … and keep things as simple as possible,” he said. “But we believe progress would be if the state acknowledged that it would provide a yes or no answer to a returning citizen seeking clarity in a certain time period.”
The agency’s proposal would give the state 90 days to respond to a returning citizen’s request.
Mark Ard, director of external relations at the Florida Department of State, told NPR that ex-felons “have always been able to get an opinion even before this bill.” He said Floridians could have clarified the matter by contacting the department’s legal department and getting an opinion on their eligibility to vote.
“This rule update is intended to provide procedures tailored to these requests, including a form to simplify the process for these people and us,” Ard said.
The agency did not respond to questions about how many Florida residents have asked the Law Department for comment since Amendment 4 went into effect and how quickly those requests were processed.
Under the new rule, after the state’s elections department issues an opinion on a person’s eligibility to vote, it would send a copy to the person who filed the application and to county election officials throughout the state.
Volz said his group expects the state to tell the person why if they are ineligible to register to vote.
“And it could be something as simple as an unpaid legal financial obligation that needs to be settled,” he said. “And if that’s the case, the citizen can correct that.”
It is currently unclear whether state officials would tell returning citizens exactly how much they owe in this initial exchange of letters.
Mass arrests in 2022 were a “catalyst” for a solution
Although advocates have been pushing for simpler procedures for former prisoners for years, Meade said the “catalyst” for the proposal was a series of arrests for alleged voter fraud two years ago.
In 2022, the state’s newly created Election Police announced that it had arrested about 20 felons for voting in the 2020 election despite being ineligible to vote under Amendment 4. Many of those arrested said they believed they were eligible to vote because local election officials had given them voter registration cards.
While the controversial cases quickly encountered obstacles in court, they also highlighted fundamental problems with the state’s system for registering eligible and ineligible voters.
Volz said that instead of spending money on investigations, arrests and the “engineering of law enforcement,” the state could have spent money on creating a system that prevents people from registering in the first place when they are not eligible to do so.
“And we’ve seen the real impact on the lives of people in Florida,” Volz said, “where there were Florida citizens who were arrested by the very same state that issued them voter IDs. The proposed process would allow us to take some distance from that period and all the things that went with it.”
Probably too late for the 2024 elections
Meade said he was optimistic and that the proposal was a “big step on the part of the state to help people” get a “solid answer” about their voting eligibility.
But he said the expectation that all of this could be resolved before this year’s election – in which Florida voters will also vote on key issues such as abortion rights and the legalization of marijuana for recreational use – is “very low.”
“By the time the decision is made, the 90-day period in which you can give a person a response will have expired well in advance so that they can register in time to vote in this year’s general election,” Meade said.
“Although this is an important election, it will not be the only election,” he said. “Even though people may not be able to participate in this one, there will be other ways. And fortunately, hopefully we will have a system in place that makes this process much smoother and safer and instills more confidence in potential voters.”
Copyright: NPR
