In battleground Florida, tough stance on felons may sap votes for Democrats
1.5 million former felons stripped of right to vote
Leonard “Roscoe” Newton has been in and out of Florida’s prisons since before he could vote, starting with a youthful conviction for burglary. He’s been a free man for six years now with an important exception: he still can’t vote. Newton, who is African American, is among nearly 1.5 million former felons who have been stripped of their right to vote in a state with a history of deciding US presidential elections, sometimes by razor-thin margins of just a few hundred votes.
Felons have been disenfranchised in Florida since 1868, although they can seek clemency to restore their voting rights. Since 2011, however, when Republican state leaders toughened the restrictions on felon voting rights, just 2,339 exfelons have had that right restored, the lowest annual numbers in nearly two decades, according to state data reviewed by Reuters. That compares with more than 155,000 in the prior four years under reforms introduced by Governor Rick Scott’s predecessor, moderate Republican governor Charlie Crist, the data shows.
Restore voting rights
Crist, who was governor from 2007 to 2011, made it much easier to restore ex-felons’ voting rights. “When I tried to be an effective member of the community, I saw that I was voiceless,” said Newton, whose expectations of getting his rights restored were dashed when the rules changed under a new administration. “I’m 45, and I have never voted.” The dramatic slowdown has stoked a racially charged debate over whether political bias taints the process of restoring felon voting rights in the largest battleground state in the Nov 8 presidential election.
Florida’s toughened ban means racial minorities are disproportionately excluded from voting because of higher incarceration rates, data shows. Black voters tend to favor Democrats. “Republicans oppose the felon vote change because they are concerned about the political implications,” said Darryl Paulson, a conservative Republican voting rights expert who sees wide restoration of voting rights as “a huge political advantage for the Democratic Party.” Paulson says non-violent ex-felons should have the right to vote.
Almost all US states deny incarcerated felons the right to vote but many restore those rights after they have completed their sentences. Over the last two decades, more than 20 states have taken action to help people with criminal convictions regain their voting rights. Since July, Virginia’s governor has restored voting rights to 67,000 felons. Florida is the largest of four remaining states that strip all former felons of voting rights, accounting for nearly half of those barred from voting nationally. Along with Virginia, the others are Kentucky and Iowa.
Tough new measures
In March 2011, two months after he became governor, Scott reversed Crist’s reforms, which had allowed many non-violent felons to automatically get their voting rights reinstated after they had completed their sentences. Crist had also simplified the process for felons convicted of more serious crimes to regain their votes. Scott, a millionaire former health care executive, put in place new restrictions, requiring ex-felons to wait for five to seven years before applying to regain the right to vote, serve on a jury or hold elected office. He said the new rules ensured exfelons had proven they were unlikely to offend.
Florida has disenfranchised about one in five voting-age black voters, according to research collected by the Sentencing Project, a Washington-based advocacy group. That compares with about 8.6 percent of the state’s nonblack potential voters. Data on the Hispanic voting-age population who can’t vote because of the law was unavailable, although Hispanics make up 12.5 percent of Florida’s inmates. The rates reflect racial disparities in criminal convictions. Florida’s current prison population is nearly 48 percent black, more than any other racial group, although blacks are only 17 percent of the state’s population.
Ion Sancho, supervisor of elections in Leon County, which includes the capital city of Tallahassee, accused the Republican administration of repealing the felon voting reforms “to reduce the number of African Americans who had their rights restored because those voters were perceived to be more Democratic voting and so therefore were targeted for elimination.” Sancho is a former Democrat who is now unaffiliated with either party. Scott and Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Republican officials who drove the 2011 policy changes, did not agree to be interviewed by Reuters or respond directly to questions on the accusations that the law is intended to influence elections.
But Bondi has previously denied the policy amounts to racially motivated disenfranchisement. “For those who may suggest that these rule changes have anything to do with race, these assertions are completely unfounded. Justice has nothing to do with race,” Bondi wrote in a 2011 newspaper editorial. Scott’s office, in a statement to Reuters, said former felons need to “demonstrate that they can live a life free of crime, show a willingness to request to have their rights restored and show restitution to the victims of their crimes” in order to have their voting rights restored.
‘Fundamentally wrong’
Democrats have seized on the issue as a civil rights concern, regardless of the political impact, said Nell Toensmann, who chairs the Democratic Party of St Johns County, a north Florida region of about 225,000 people dominated by Republicans. “Yes, it does disenfranchise a lot of African Americans, but it disenfranchises a lot of white people who would be voting as Republicans as well,” she said. The Reuters/Ipsos States of the Nation polling project shows a tight race in Florida. It estimates that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has a 48 percent chance of winning the state, compared to her Republican opponent Donald Trump’s 42 percent. Political scientists say the voting ban can sap votes from both parties, but some research suggests that Democrats pay a steeper price. An analysis of voting patterns by race and economic status found that if the ban had not existed during the 2000 presidential election, Democrats would have had enough votes to overturn Republican George W. Bush’s 537-vote victory in Florida that won him the White House. “In very close elections won by Republican candidates, felon disenfranchisement could be decisive,” said Christopher Uggen, a University of Minnesota professor who led the study. —Reuters