OUR VIEW: Ex-felons’ voting ban full of defects.
A recent federal court ruling has put an exclamation point on a worthy campaign to eliminate Florida’s constitutional ban on voting by ex-felons.
Under current law, ex-felons must wait at least five years after completing their sentences before appealing personally to the governor and three members of Florida’s Cabinet to have their civil rights, including voting, restored. Fewer than 3,000 exfelons have regained their voting rights since Gov. Rick Scott took office more than seven years ago — 0.2 percent of the more than 1.5 million now disenfranchised under the draconian state ban.
The governor and the Cabinet, sitting as the Florida Executive Clemency Board, consider applications — normally fewer than 100 per meeting — just four times a year. It’s not surprising that there’s a backlog of more than 10,000 applications.
An arbitrary and discriminatory process
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker, in a ruling issued Feb. 1, struck down this “crushingly restrictive” process as unconstitutional. In the view of the judge, the law requires ex-felons seeking to regain their voting rights to “kowtow before a panel of high-level government officials over which Florida’s governor has absolute veto authority.” This “scheme,” Walker wrote, “crumbles under strict scrutiny because it risks — if not covertly authorizes the practice of — arbitrary and discriminatory vote restoration.”
The judge gave both sides in the case — lawyers for nine exfelons representing the entire class of Floridians denied the right to vote, and lawyers for the state who tried and failed to defend the system — until Monday to submit remedies for its constitutional flaws.
One obvious short-term remedy would be to renew the process established by former Gov. Charlie Crist, which allowed the state’s parole commission to restore voting rights to nonviolent ex-felons without a hearing. More than 150,000 regained those rights during Crist’s four years as chief executive. Scott switched to the current, unconstitutional process after taking office in 2011.
We urge Scott to follow, rather than keep fighting, Walker’s ruling. The governor already has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on this and other fruitless legal battles.
Ultimately Florida needs to repeal its ban on voting by exfelons, not just repair it. As one of just three states with this policy, Florida is an outlier.
A post-Civil War leftover
Florida’s ban is an ugly leftover from the period following the Civil War, when it was enacted to undercut a federal law that compelled states to grant blacks the right to vote. Even today, one in five blacks of voting age in Florida can’t cast ballots because of the ban.
Rescinding Florida’s punitive and discriminatory policy would be a positive step for public safety. A study from the Florida Commission on Offender Review found that ex-felons whose voting rights were restored were less likely to re-offend than those who could not vote.
In November, Florida voters will be presented with the opportunity to pass a constitutional amendment that would automatically restore voting rights to ex-felons, except for those who have committed murder or sex crimes, once they have fully completed their sentences, including parole and probation. The amendment earned a spot on the ballot through a statewide petition drive that collected more than a million signatures.
Rather than settle for a temporary fix that prolongs an excessively punitive and discriminatory policy, voters should seize their chance this fall to overturn Florida’s ban.