The US supreme court ruled against my voting rights. As an ex-felon, my scarlet letter is back
This month, the supreme court ruled in favor of Florida Republicans in their quest to take away the voting rights of people with felony convictions – people like me.
In 2011, I was an involuntary participant in a crime, but the charges were serious. At the time, I was a teacher and I had never been in trouble with the law before. Even then, the jury found me guilty and I was sentenced to 30 months in state prison. I was scared as hell, and heartbroken leaving my sixyear-old daughter without me. I told her: “Mommy just had to leave to go to work.” I vowed to explain when she was older.
After seven months at the Florida department of corrections, I was in a work release program. I worked at two call centers to scrape by, but my paychecks weren’t mine: 60% went to the department of corrections, 20% into a mandatory savings account, and 10% toward the court fines and fees I incurred in my trial. At the time, my fine was $50,000 and an additional $4,714 in court fees.
It’s these fines and fees that Republicans have used to keep us returning citizens from regaining the right to vote after we leave prison.
In 2017, I joined the Amendment 4 initiative and fought to get 1.7m signatures to put forth a ballot amendment to restore voting rights to people with felony convictions like me, so we can have a second chance. Floridians supported our measure – 64% voted in favor of the amendment. But two months later the state Republicans and Ron DeSantis, the governor, started to dismantle it by adding a requirement that returning citizens would need to pay off their debt to the state beforehand.
There are many obstacles that make it impossible for people like me to do this. When I left prison, I felt like I had the scarlet letter of “Felon” stamped on my head. My charge prevented me from getting help through housing, emergency cash assistance and food stamps. My daughter was resilient – now eight years old, she never skipped a beat, but I was struggling. I applied for jobs online the very day I was released, and everyone turned me down; McDonald’s, Target, Walmart, 7-Eleven, CVS. Eventually, I had some luck on an interview at our local hospital but was told the next day I didn’t pass my background check. I fell into a deep depression.
I believe the Republican bill is a modern-day Jim Crow-like “poll tax” and it is illegal. The legislature agreed to the terms of Amendment 4 being voted into the constitution, so why didn’t they add this clause then? They did not expect us to win, that is why. They did not expect people to support the second-chance initiative, but they did and in a mighty way.
I agreed to be a plaintiff in the lawsuit against DeSantis and the state of Florida to protect Amendment 4 from these unfair financial burdens. I testified before Judge Robert Hinkle in federal court in October 2019 and told him: “I just want a fair shot at employment, your honor. It is my financial obligation and I am not running from it at all. I just can’t pay it.” At the most, I was making $450 a week.
For a while, it felt like we were winning. Hinkle called the Republican law a poll tax. I voted in the 2020 March primary, with my family, for the first time since 2008. My daughter got to go with me to the poll and see Mommy exercise her vote. I felt complete, like a whole citizen again.
But my happiness was short-lived. On 11 September, DeSantis went over the head of Hinkle to the 11th circuit court and got a ruling in his favor demanding returning citizens pay to vote. My scarlet letter is back in full effect. However, its impact no longer robs me of hope. It no longer intimidates me to move forward nor does it define who I am or what I can accomplish.
We will continue to fight, right up to the steps of the US supreme court if we have to.