Nearly two years after Florida voters approved a landmark constitutional amendment allowing felons to vote, state officials don’t know how many have registered. They also don’t know how many felons on the voter rolls owe court fees, fines or restitution that would disqualify them from voting under a subsequent state law that limited the amendment’s scope.
Florida officials have not removed any felons from the rolls for owing fines or fees, and they’re unlikely to do so before Election Day, Secretary of State Laurel Lee said in an interview Monday. It’s unclear whether those whom the state fails to prune are entitled to vote after all — or may face prosecution if they do.
With so much in flux, the winner in Florida of the closely watched presidential vote could be decided by the courts for the second time in two decades.
Amid the confusion, the one certainty is that Florida’s Republican governor and Legislature have tamped down the felon vote, according to an analysis of state records by the Tampa Bay Times, Miami Herald and ProPublica. In a presidential election marred by voter suppression tactics, such as misinformation about vote-by-mail fraud, the weakening of Florida’s ballot measure, known as Amendment 4, may constitute the biggest single instance of voter disenfranchisement. Like the poll taxes of the Jim Crow era, the restrictions have especially hit Black Floridians, who make up a disproportionate share of felons and register overwhelmingly as Democrats.
By comparing the Florida Department of Corrections database of roughly 418,000 inmates released since 1997 with the state’s August list of nearly 15 million registered voters, the analysis found that about 31,400 Floridians with felony convictions have registered to vote since Amendment 4 took effect in January 2019. More than twice as many have registered as Democrats than Republicans, and the amendment has had the greatest impact in counties with higher numbers of Black residents. In Gadsden County, the only one in the state where more than half of the residents are Black, felons made up at least 1 in 5 new voters. In seven other counties with sizable Black populations, felons make up at least 1 in every 15 new voters. (cont)
