But Florida’s newest Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, arrived in office last January, and by June had pushed the Republican-dominated legislature to add a provision to the law requiring ex-felons to pay fines and fees before being eligible for reenfranchisement. Robert P. Alvarez at the Institute for Policy Studies wrote that this subverts Amendment 4. Sponsors say it amounts to an illegal poll tax. Others just call it voter suppression motivated by racism.
In October, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle, a Clinton appointee to the federal bench, ruled that it’s unconstitutional to deny ex-felons the right to vote if they’re too poor to pay fines and other costs imposed on them by the courts. He said the state must come up with an administrative solution to provide ex-felons with a way to prove that they can’t pay. The state appealed his decision to the 11th Circuit Court. It also asked Hinkle for a stay until the appeal is completed.
The problem with that, Hinkle noted in a testy court session Wednesday, is that, given the speed with which the court system typically operates, no decision might be forthcoming in time for ex-felons to be able to register to vote for the March 17 Florida presidential primaries. The registration deadline is Feb. 18. Leah Aden, who represents the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said the situation has voter-registration groups “at a loss for what to do.”
State lawyers told Hinkle that if his ruling isn’t stayed, evaluating ex-felons’ financial situations and registering the many tens of thousands of them eligible to vote would be an administrative burden. If the appeals court agrees with Hinkle, the lawyers said after much querying from Hinkle, the governor’s view is that this would make all of Amendment 4 law null because there is no severability that would allow the uncontested parts of a law to be separated from a part found to be unconstitutional.
Dara Kam reports in the Tampa Bay Times:
“If you really want to comply with the Constitution and let everyone who’s eligible to vote vote, pretty easy,” the judge said. “You put in place a constitutional system, it won’t matter if they (plaintiffs) like it or not. What you can’t do is to run out the clock so that people who are eligible to vote don’t get to vote in the March primary or, more importantly, in the presidential election.”
The reality here is a familiar one. If Republicans can figure out a way to suppress the vote of people more likely to vote for Democrats, not to mention suppress the votes of African Americans and other people of color, they’ll do it. Is it any surprise so many Republicans have jumped ship and consider Abraham Lincoln, the first president of their party, to be a lesser man than the squatter now occupying the White House?
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