Former felon: ‘Make voting exciting again’ for others

As Desmond Meade prepares to vote next month for the first time, thousands of former felons like him can’t go to the polls, and many only think they can’t.

“We get calls throughout the state from people who are unsure about whether they can vote because of fines and fees,” said Meade, who spearheaded the Amendment 4 push last year to restore voting rights to ex-felons. “And we analyze their files and we come to find out … they don’t have any fees or fines.”

Voting rights for thousands of former felons remain in limbo across Florida as a court battle rages on over whether fines, fees and restitution should be a barrier to voting, a provision added in a law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in June.

A partial injunction issued by a federal judge on Oct. 18, affecting only 17 people but concluding the law would not likely stand, has only further muddied the waters.

But the election calendar presses on anyway. And early voting in for the city elections in Orlando begins on Monday whether the state is ready or not.

“We had said to people, ‘If you believe you meet the requirements, go ahead and register,” Orange County elections supervisor Bill Cowles said of Orlando’s Nov. 5 election for mayor and council. Registration for that election ended on Oct. 7.

Now, he said, “If people believe they’re eligible to vote, they’re eligible to vote in Florida, until such time they’re identified [as owing fines, fees or restitution] in whatever process is done at the state level.”

So far, the state hasn’t sent any information to supervisors challenging the eligibility of former felons, a process Cowles said was halted in the wake of Amendment 4’s victory in November. If a supervisor receives information a person who registered is ineligible, the law requires that he or she be notified by election officials before being removed from the rolls.

Any former felon who registered between January, when the amendment went into effect, and July, when the law implementing went into effect, should also retain their right to vote, experts believe.

But, Cowles said, “anything can change when any of this is clarified.”

Daniel Smith, a University of Florida political science professor who studies Florida’s election system, testified as part of the federal lawsuit challenging the law that about four in five former felons, or about 500,000, still have some type of legal financial obligation. Most owe between $500 and $5,000, he said.

Municipal elections in Orlando, Miami, St. Petersburg and elsewhere on Nov. 5 will be the first since the fines and fees law went into effect. The elections will test whether the state knows who they consider ineligible for owing fines or fees, and whether there will be any repercussions for anyone in that group if they vote.

It’s a felony to cast a ballot if the voter knows he or she is ineligible – but proving that is tricky, and prosecutions are rare.

Cowles said it is up to the state attorney’s office to determine whether to press charges, not the supervisors.

Meade, head of the Florida Rights and Restoration Coalition, was a former addict convicted on drug and firearm charges in 2001 before he turned his life around and earned a law degree. He said he and a group of other former felons are preparing to cast an early vote the weekend before the election at the Orange elections office.

“Just thinking about me voting for the first time brings tears to my eyes,” Meade said. “And we will bring family and friends, people who don’t normally vote. … People have been silenced for so long without the right to vote in any election in our community. We want to make voting exciting again.”

The same day Meade votes, his organization plans to kick off a three-week bus tour across the state, from Jacksonville to Miami and concluding in Orlando, that will “engage, educate and register” former felons.

According to Meade, the group has raised more than $400,000 to help pay off fines and fees and help others go through the judicial process to have their fines and fees waived in court, according to a provision in the new law.

The total amount owed by the about 500,000 ex-felons isn’t exactly known. But in Orange County alone, according to the Clerk of Courts office, more than $418 million is still owed on outstanding cases dating back to 1970, and only about $45 million has been paid off.

And in the three largest counties in South Florida, Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, that number exceeds $1 billion combined.

“We have registered more than 1,000 people just by ourselves,” Meade said. “And we’ve met folks registering on their own as well. … But we’re going around the state to let people know there are pathways, in spite of whatever confusion the litigation is causing.”

Staff writer Gray Rohrer contributed to this report. slemongello@ orlandosentinel.com