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After weeks of debate and the objections of several voting and human rights groups, the Florida legislature passed a measure requiring people with a criminal record to pay all the financial obligations resulting from their sentencing. or have them dispensed by a judge before they can vote. restored rights.
Friday, at the closing hours of the legislative session, the Florida House voted 67-42 Adopt an amended Election Bill containing the repayment obligation. A similar bill was approved by the Florida Senate a day earlier.
Politico reports that the decision to add the requirements to a larger bill on elections was a change "at the eleventh hour". Previously, this requirement was contained in two separate bills, both of which focused on the implementation of a 2018 ballot initiative to restore the voting rights of persons with criminal records.
According to the Miami Herald, the bill passed by the Senate requires anyone to pay all "court fees, fines and restitution" before they can vote and also provides two ways to waive these fees. The first option is that a judge, with the agreement of the victim of a crime, can waive the repayment obligation. The second option allows a judge to convert all fines, costs and damages into community service hours. In the second scenario, a person's voting rights would be reinstated once community service ended.
State advocates argue that the new measure will undoubtedly limit the impact of Amendment 4, a popular electoral initiative of 2018 that restored people's right to vote. "Who have served all their sentences, including parole or probation". who is sentenced for sexual offense or murder.
Initially, 1.4 million Floridians were eligible to vote under the amendment, which came into effect in January. It is not known how many people will be affected by the repayment measure.
Proponents of Amendment 4 claim that lawmakers have violated the spirit of what voters have argued in subordinating a person 's voting rights to the amount of money that they have. she can afford to pay, noting that this requirement will have disparate consequences for an excessively black group that is likely to be out of work. or big income.
Republican lawmakers say the bill was a necessary clarification of the law. Proponents of Amendment 4 do not agree.
The fight for Amendment 4 began last year. Shortly after the adoption of the amendment with nearly 65% of the vote, Florida Republicans argued that this amendment required further clarification from the legislature.
"I think we are bound by the Constitution to include all the terms of the sentence … and I think that through this law we are complying with our constitutional obligation to define those terms not defined in the amendment "Said Sen. Jeff Brandes of the state of Florida, who sponsored the original Senate. version of the bill, said Thursday.
Proponents of Amendment 4, however, argue that the initiative need not be clarified and that lawmakers are simply trying to undermine one of the most important extensions of voting rights in decades.
Local experts also said that the new measure adopted was confusing and could create an additional burden on the Florida court system.
One of the problems is that there is no single entity to follow Florida's complex network of fines, fees and restitutions, making it difficult to know how people will be informed of the amount the total they will have to repay, or how local election officials track who can and can not register.
Another is that the measure does not contain any information on how the courts should deal with the influx of people seeking to have their financial obligations terminated or converted to work in the public interest.
"If you have potentially 1.5 million people [seeking changes to their sentence], will it create such a delay that each court should appoint a judge to hear all waiver applications? Said Stanford Blake, a former Miami-Dade circuit court judge at the Miami Herald.
Instead, lawmakers have stated that they expect each court to create its own process for dealing with these issues and have suggested that the courts create special days for judges to consider cases related to the courts. 39, amendment 4.
"Do we want a uniform voting system where people pay their time, they can vote again? Or do we just want to say, "Here we are again, Floriduh," Democratic Senator Perry Thurston said Thursday.
After passing the bill on Friday, supporters of Amendment 4 said the move was a step backward in the reintegration efforts of people with criminal records in local communities. "We call on the governor to rally to the 1.4 million returning citizens and push for better legislation," said Desmond Meade, executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, in a statement on Friday. "For now, we will continue to move forward with the goal of creating a more inclusive and vibrant democracy for all by seeking to register qualified returning citizens in Florida."
If the bill is signed, it is expected that civil rights groups will take legal action against the legislation. On Friday, Florida's ACLU told CNN that she "will explore all options to ensure that the will of the people is achieved".
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