As the Florida Voting Rights Restoration Coalition helps returning citizens overcome unfair poll taxes and register to vote, a group called People Over Profits is embarking on a campaign to make the FRRC’s work no longer necessary.
People Over Profits launched an effort last week to qualify a ballot amendment that would make most formerly incarcerated Floridians eligible to vote as soon as they’ve completed their full sentence. If passed, the initiative would finally end a legal disenfranchisement that reaches all the way back to 1845, when Florida was a slave state.
It is one of three voting rights amendments the organization is working to put on the 2022 ballot.
To rehash what I went over last week: In 2018, 65% of Floridians approved Amendment 4, a ballot initiative intended to restore the voting rights of over one million people and end the permanent disenfranchisement of returning citizens going forward. It was a massive triumph of grassroots democracy, but just a few months later, Republicans in the state neutered the amendment with a law that stipulated returning citizens must pay off onerous fines before gaining access to the ballot.
With more than 750,000 Floridians unable to meet or even track down those financial requirements, the GOP’s law quickly returned Florida to a Jim Crow status quo; Black people make up about 17% of Florida's total population but nearly half of its prison population. In 2018, Black Floridians accounted for nearly a third of the 1.4 million permanently disenfranchised — nearly 20% of Florida’s entire Black voting-age population.
“I know when I voted for Amendment 4, I didn't anticipate fees and fines would stand in the way of some returning citizens being able to vote, and I think I'm probably in the majority of most people that voted for it,” says Sean Shaw, a former Democratic state representative and founder of People Over Profits. “It's a shame that we've got to come back and do this, but that's what we're here to do.”
The other two amendments are focused on making registering to vote easier for everyone: One would enact same-day voter registration while the other would update the state’s Motor Voter law so that eligible Floridians would be automatically registered to vote or have their registration info updated if necessary.
“Taken together, we estimate these three amendments would [lead to] a million new voters on the rolls,” Shaw explains. “I don't know if those are Republican voters, I don't know if those are Democratic voters, I don't know if those are NPA [no party affiliation] voters. I just know that more eligible people participating in democracy is good for democracy.”
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That should not be a controversial statement, but the Republican trifecta in Florida has instead moved to make voting much more difficult this session. The party’s new voter suppression law has a long list of pernicious clauses, including ones that:
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Create strict voter ID requirements on mail-in ballots
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Require more frequent mail-in ballot requests
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Severely restrict the number of ballot drop boxes and who can access them
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Criminalize ballot delivery by volunteers and friends
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Ban counties from accepting help in administering elections
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Gives state legislature and attorney general more control over county legal matters related to elections
These are all designed to stop voter turnout, while another law specifically targets ballot initiatives like those Shaw and his organization are trying to qualify and enact. Together, they’re being called the Fair Elections for Democracy Amendments.
In each of the past three elections, Floridians have voted overwhelmingly to approve medical marijuana (2016), pass Amendment 4’s voting rights expansion (2018), and raise the minimum wage to $15-an-hour (2020). The massive price tag inherent for a statewide campaign in Florida meant that each of those initiatives required significant financial support from major civic-minded donors. The Florida GOP, eager to cut off all forms of democracy, passed a law last month to limit donations to ballot initiative campaigns to just $3,000 per person, a limit that they did not extend to political campaigns.
The ACLU immediately sued the state over the law, which it asserts infringes on the right to free speech and nullifies direct democracy. Shaw, who lost a close contest for state attorney general in 2018, says he’s confident that the law, which he calls “blatantly unconstitutional,” will be overturned. And if the right-wing Supreme Court doesn’t overturn the new law, Shaw says that the campaigns will be much harder to win — but not at all impossible.
People Over Profits estimates that it would take about $20 million to get these amendments on the ballot, but the group has already baked in a structure to make up for potential limits on fundraising. Each ballot amendment is being sponsored by a different organization established for that express purpose. Being under the Fair Elections for Democracy umbrella will also all them to pool their efforts when it comes to collecting petition signatures.
The FRRC is also backing the effort, creating an important synergy after the overwhelming success of Amendment 4. Fair Vote Florida is backing the rights restoration amendment, Florida Votes Matter is behind the same-day registration effort, and Our Votes Matter is pushing the automatic registration amendment.
“Any church that I went to visit had petitions for Amendment 4 in the back and people were filling them out, they were just everywhere,” Shaw says. “Everywhere you went, there were petitions for Amendment 4 and we’re just gonna have to replicate that.”
They will do their best to pay signature-gatherers if their funds are limited, but it’s going to have to be a massive grassroots campaign that overwhelms the many roadblocks put in their way. There really isn’t any other option — it’s pass these amendments or see democracy burned to the ground.
“We really hope that we get this over the finish line this cycle, because there's no telling what the legislature might do next session to make it even harder [in 2024],” Shaw says. “So we’ve got to get this done now and that's why we're all working really hard to get these three done this cycle.”
CLICK HERE to Donate to People Over Profits!
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