19 Apr 2022 10:42 pm
Without the giant copy/pasta what EXACTLY is the GQP supporting that will prevent some people from voting?B.See » 19 Apr 2022, 10:07 pm » wrote: ↑ Proof positive of the right's resistance to... no... OUTRIGHT AVERSION to, TRUTHS AND FACTS. A thread FULL of dozens of articles documenting how voting rights are under attack, yet along comes someone to ask some stupid **** like that.
MEANWHILE:
The long, inspiring fight to restore voting rights for people with felony convictions in Florida | The Independent
In 2018, over five million Floridians agreed, passing Florida’s Amendment 4 ballot initiative with 64 per cent of the vote, including about one million people who voted for Republican governor Ron DeSantis.
The campaign, with support ranging from the ACLU to the Koch brothers, was the largest extension of voting rights in the US in half a century, and would allow as many as 1.6 million formerly incarcerated people access to the franchise. Or at least, that was the plan.
At its heart, the measure strengthened the US system as a whole, giving more people a chance to participate and have a sense of political agency over the decisions that affect their lives, Mr Meade of FRRC said. It’s the rare thing that transcends politics and should be beloved by everyone.“It’s a much deeper conversation about democracy and what democracy is really about,” he said.
The conversation would begin taking a sharp turn as soon as Amendment 4 passed.Under the language of the Amendment, people wouldn’t have their rights restored until they completed all the “terms of their sentence.”
Opponents of the measure seized on this detail, arguing that that should mean the payment of all fines, fees, and restitution attached to a sentence, not just serving jail time.
In 2019, Florida Republicans passed a bill called SB 7066, making this interpretation the law.
What to an outsider might seem like a dry change to administrative law was in fact massive blow to the ideals of Amendment 4: because of Florida’s archaic, at times predatory, systems for levying fines against those in the criminal process, the legislation disqualified from voting about 1 million people who still had outstanding balances with the state.
Florida was now locked in an absurd conundrum, what one judge called “an administrative nightmare.” The state, despite keeping people from voting based on their fines, has no central database keeping track of them. The 67 different county clerks offices responsible for such records varied widely, with some keeping detailed electronic records, and others lacking files, paper or otherwise, at all, especially for older convictions.