Florida was one of three states in the United States with permanent disenfranchisement for former criminals – a Jim Crow-era policy on the state’s constitution since 1868. In Florida alone, 48 per cent of all inmates are black, for instance, even though they make up just 15.5 per cent of the population. An overwhelming majority of voters in Florida cast their ballots supporting an amendment aimed at putting an end to the Draconian state law barring former criminals – a group that includes some 1.4 million people – from ever voting again.
Republicans are working hard to implement restrictions to the landmark amendment approved by voters last November that would have marked the largest expansion of voting rights the US has seen in decades. Soon after the measure was approved in Florida, however, Republicans in the state had already begun thinking up ways to subvert the new law. Republicans were working to undermine a measure that was more popular at the ballot box than any elected official in the state. With healthy majorities in the state Senate and House, and continued control of the governor’s mansion, power was theirs to lose. And if they get their way, some Floridans will have to pay more than $50,000 (£39,000) to the state before they can ever vote again. When Amendment 4 legally took effect, the state legislature and Senate – both of which are controlled by Republicans introduced a bill now commonly referred to as SB7066. That bill would require former felons to pay off outstanding court fees and fines before being allowed to vote.
Voting rights advocates say that there’s a more sinister history at work with SB7066 – one that dates back to the very first efforts by African Americans and poor whites to participate in democracy in America.
Republicans are working hard to implement restrictions to the landmark amendment approved by voters last November that would have marked the largest expansion of voting rights the US has seen in decades. Soon after the measure was approved in Florida, however, Republicans in the state had already begun thinking up ways to subvert the new law. Republicans were working to undermine a measure that was more popular at the ballot box than any elected official in the state. With healthy majorities in the state Senate and House, and continued control of the governor’s mansion, power was theirs to lose. And if they get their way, some Floridans will have to pay more than $50,000 (£39,000) to the state before they can ever vote again. When Amendment 4 legally took effect, the state legislature and Senate – both of which are controlled by Republicans introduced a bill now commonly referred to as SB7066. That bill would require former felons to pay off outstanding court fees and fines before being allowed to vote.
Voting rights advocates say that there’s a more sinister history at work with SB7066 – one that dates back to the very first efforts by African Americans and poor whites to participate in democracy in America.
According to Carol Anderson, a historian with Emory University and author of several books on the history of voter suppression in the United States, the fight in Florida has roots all the way back to 1890 Mississippi, when some of the first measures to suppress the black vote were conceived in post-Emancipation America. At that time, predominantly white politicians came forward to the public with what seemed like a reasonable argument: democracy costs money. Ballots don’t print themselves, nor do they count themselves. So, it only makes sense that states would require investment from voters in the form of a small fee — one that ultimately served to deny African American voters, suffering from the myriad resounding impacts of slavery, the right to vote.
Poll taxes were made illegal in 1963 but Anderson says it’s hard not to see a return of the tactic.
“If you’ve been incarcerated for years, what is your likelihood of having the deep pockets to be able to pay all of those fines and fees – and those fines and fees are, frankly, very arbitrary,” she says. “So, it is now making the ability to vote dependent upon, ‘have you paid the fee? How deep are your pockets’.”
Anderson noted that, just like the poll taxes outlawed more than half a century ago, the biggest group impacted by Florida’s law are African Americans. An analysis by the Brennan Centre also finds that SB7066 would disproportionately impact African Americans. “If you can stop that cohort, that group from voting, you can shape an electorate in a way that allows, well that is really in violation of the Constitution,” she says. “It is a poll tax, because your ability to pay means whether you can gain access to your voting rights or not. That’s why it is a poll tax.”
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