A triumph for voting rights

There is a bittersweet aspect to Tuesday’s heartwarming passage of Amendment 4, the initiative that restores voting rights to some 1.4 million Floridians who’ve been convicted of a felony but have paid their debts to society.

How different might other campaigns have turned out had they already been allowed to vote, as they would have been in most other states?

Given that most are African-American, a demographic that votes heavily Democratic, Andrew Gillum would likely be the governor-elect and Bill Nelson would be returning to the Senate. It would be the Republican Party clamoring for recounts, although the margins might not have been so close as they are today.

As matters stand, Gov. Rick Scott — the apparent senator-elect — must be pleased by the success of the massive voter-suppression apparatus he initiated nearly eight years ago after succeeding Charlie Crist, at the time a Republican with a strong anticrime record.

Crist agreed every year to restore voting rights to more than 100,000 former felons leading law-abiding lives. Scott cut that to a trickle by requiring people to wait five to seven years before applying. Then, he and the Cabinet granted barely 3,000 as the waitlist swelled to 11,000. Countless people gave up.

Pam Bondi, the departing attorney general, was complicit in this voter suppression scheme. It should weigh heavily against her confirmation for any office to which President Trump, whom she has slavishly supported, might appoint her. One rumor has her under consideration to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions, which would be deplorable.

“Not since the 26th Amendment lowered the voting age to 18 in 1971 has a law change conferred voting rights to so many Americans,” the Brennan Center for Justice wrote this week of the successful Florida initiative.

Florida owes thanks to the ACLU, the Brennan Center, the Koch-funded Freedom Partners and others who gave their money and time to Floridians for a Fair Democracy Inc., which organized the $26 million campaign to gather signatures to put Amendment 4 on the ballot, where it won 64.5 percent of the vote.

Florida stands taller among the states today.

But county results reveal the enduring power of racial politics. Six of Florida’s 67 counties cast a majority of their votes against the amendment, and 39 others favored it by less than the necessary 60 percent for passage. All were either in north Florida or in such noted Republican strongholds as Charlotte, Collier and Lee.

The fact remains that nearly two thirds of Florida voters did the right thing Tuesday.

So let us suggest another initiative campaign that could do a world of good.

Also on Tuesday, voters in Idaho, Nebraska and Utah voted in favor of ballot initiatives to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, something that Scott and the Florida Legislature have refused to do. That political spitefulness — rooted in the Republican vendetta against President Barack Obama — left some 1.5-million low-income Floridians ineligible for Medicaid, including about 467,000 who also do not qualify for health insurance subsidies under the ACA.

Idaho, Nebraska and Utah are conservative states that voted strongly for Donald Trump. In three other states — Kansas, Wisconsin and Maine — the election of Democratic governors likely means a total of six more states will accept the Medicaid expansion, leaving only Florida and ten others as outliers.

In a Kaiser poll last month, 56 percent of the people in the 17 non-expansion states said they favored joining the program and only 34 percent opposed it. Although that falls short of Florida’s 60 percent threshold for ratification of constitutional amendments, it’s highly likely the numbers would improve from a reasonably funded campaign to inform voters of the benefits to everyone. After all, “charity” care at hospitals isn’t free to the public, who pay for it through cost shifting built into their health insurance premiums.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has estimated that Florida’s refusal will cost the state $66.1 billion in Medicaid money by 2023, more than any other state. That translates to thousands of jobs turned away — and many lives lost.

If Ron DeSantis clings to his narrow lead, Florida’s next governor will be hostile to Medicaid expansion. So will the Legislature. But Florida’s people aren’t.

The time is right — and so, we think, is the public’s mood — for another voter initiative.

If Andrew Gillum is looking for a good cause to lead, that would be it.