After the Civil War, Florida’s governor vowed that the state “of course, could never accede to the demand for Negro suffrage.” The state legislature stood equally defiant, resentful that Florida “must be shorn of our representation or give the inferior and unintelligent race the supremacy in state government.” They hit on the solution during an 1868 constitutional convention: Florida bitterly accepted the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution in order to get back into the Union, but then wrote felony disenfranchisement into their state constitution, guaranteeing that actual equality in voting would be an illusion. Florida’s new constitution and “Black Law” turned low-level crimes—vagrancy, petty theft, and similar crimes they believed most likely to be committed by the former slaves — into felonies.
In November, 64 percent of Floridians voted to restore the voting rights of more than 1.4 million neighbors who’d served their time and earned back every privilege of citizenship.
Felon disenfranchisement is one of America’s earliest and longest-lasting forms of voter suppression. Florida has long been its ground zero. More than 10 percent of all adults—and almost a quarter of African-Americans—lost their voting rights permanently because of a conviction, an extra punishment of civic death continuing long after their release.
Republicans in Florida’s state legislature are trying to sabotage the will of the people in the ugliest way possible: a modern-day poll tax.
A House committee has advanced a bill that retroactively alters the amendment and strips all Floridians of their voting rights if they have not paid court fines and fees related to their case, even if those fines were not part of their original sentence. Hundreds of thousands of people could be affected. It could require some of the most vulnerable and impoverished Floridians to generate hundreds of millions of dollars, collectively, to become citizens again.
A study by the Brennan Center documented how Florida has added 20 additional categories of fines and fees since 1996, often burdening those formerly convicted with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt as they reenter society, jobless and often destitute. It breeds never-ending debt and sometimes makes it impossible for people to hold a driver’s license after their release, let alone a job to pay off mounting bills.
The Brennan Center calls this “cash register justice,” and it accomplishes two tasks: Those who can pay help Florida finance its criminal justice system. Those who can’t wind up back in court or have their licenses suspended for failing to pay exorbitant fees. Then the state sells the debt to outside collection agencies that add as much as 40 percent interest atop already crushing bills. It’s a scheme to keep African-Americans away from the polls.
From here
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/04/02/florida-officials-are-trying-sabotage-will-people-modern-day-jim-crow-law
In November, 64 percent of Floridians voted to restore the voting rights of more than 1.4 million neighbors who’d served their time and earned back every privilege of citizenship.
Felon disenfranchisement is one of America’s earliest and longest-lasting forms of voter suppression. Florida has long been its ground zero. More than 10 percent of all adults—and almost a quarter of African-Americans—lost their voting rights permanently because of a conviction, an extra punishment of civic death continuing long after their release.
Republicans in Florida’s state legislature are trying to sabotage the will of the people in the ugliest way possible: a modern-day poll tax.
A House committee has advanced a bill that retroactively alters the amendment and strips all Floridians of their voting rights if they have not paid court fines and fees related to their case, even if those fines were not part of their original sentence. Hundreds of thousands of people could be affected. It could require some of the most vulnerable and impoverished Floridians to generate hundreds of millions of dollars, collectively, to become citizens again.
A study by the Brennan Center documented how Florida has added 20 additional categories of fines and fees since 1996, often burdening those formerly convicted with hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt as they reenter society, jobless and often destitute. It breeds never-ending debt and sometimes makes it impossible for people to hold a driver’s license after their release, let alone a job to pay off mounting bills.
The Brennan Center calls this “cash register justice,” and it accomplishes two tasks: Those who can pay help Florida finance its criminal justice system. Those who can’t wind up back in court or have their licenses suspended for failing to pay exorbitant fees. Then the state sells the debt to outside collection agencies that add as much as 40 percent interest atop already crushing bills. It’s a scheme to keep African-Americans away from the polls.
From here
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/04/02/florida-officials-are-trying-sabotage-will-people-modern-day-jim-crow-law
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