Nearly a Million Floridians Can’t Vote. Republicans Want to Keep It That Way.
Voting is a fundamental part of American democracy, yet many felons never step foot into the polls. Photo courtesy of buschap.
For decades, the geographic preclearance requirement in the 1965 Voting Rights Act protected voting rights in historically repressive states. The Act forced jurisdictions in many Southern states that had previously enforced disenfranchisement tactics like literacy and civics tests to have new voting procedures reviewed by the federal government, ensuring that discrimination on the basis of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Shelby County v. Holder that geographic preclearance was unconstitutional. Subsequent modeling shows that this overturning of preclearance caused the turnout gap between Black and white voters to be five percentage points more than what would have been possible under preclearance. However, the reality has become Black voter suppression being conducted under the name of another group—former felons.
In 1968, the Florida Constitution was amended to state that, “no person convicted of a felony shall be qualified to vote or hold office until restoration of civil rights.” This began a history of excluding felons from the ballot box. Florida started allowing for automatic restoration of voting rights in 1975, which prevented large portions of any single population from becoming disenfranchised. This kept Florida in compliance with standards set forth by preclearance. But in 1991, the Florida Constitution was revised by the State Legislature to formally end automatic rights restoration. Although felon disenfranchisement disproportionately affected Black Floridians, the racial discrepancies created by felon disenfranchisement were not investigated by the federal government. With the Republican-led Florida Legislature opposing any advancement in felon voting rights, it was politically unrealistic for felons to regain suffrage through the legislative process.
A group of private citizens united to challenge felon disenfranchisement. Florida’s Amendment 4, a citizen-led ballot initiative, passed with over 60% of the popular vote in 2018. The initiative provided for the restoration of felons’ voting rights upon completion of their sentence. Amendment 4 specified that, “any disqualification from voting arising from a felony conviction shall terminate and voting rights shall be restored upon completion of all terms of sentence.” However, the Republican supermajority in the state legislature implemented this initiative by requiring felons to pay all “fines and fees” before restoration of suffrage. Today, nearly six years after the passage of Amendment 4 and because of this added provision, an estimated 730,000 Floridian felons who have completed their sentences are still barred from voting.
Who, then, benefits from keeping so many felons disenfranchised?
State legislators have used seemingly benign factors, like criminal record and financial means, to discriminatorily target Black Floridians. Across the nation, Black Americans are arrested and serve jail sentences at a higher rate than other groups and are overrepresented in jail populations. For as much as these issues present life-changing consequences to Black Americans in their own right, they also translate directly to voter disenfranchisement due to the State Legislature’s efforts: In 2024, disenfranchisement exceeded 10% among eligible African American voters. For reference, across all national demographics, only 6.13% of voters are disenfranchised. While some Black citizens are disenfranchised due to other factors like returning to the prison system or having an intellectual disability that prevents participation, these are negligible when compared to 1.6 million in Florida, or 40% of all disenfranchised people who have been involved with the criminal justice system, post-sentence Floridians that remain without their voting rights. The Republican legislature’s implementation of Amendment 4, forcing former felons to pay all fines and fees, self-evidently prevents a significant proportion of Black Floridians––many of whom have limited employment options to begin with––from regaining their voting rights.
Additionally, Black felons are disproportionately impoverished and may be unable to afford the fees associated with restoring their voting rights. Black Americans face a 17.1% poverty rate compared to the national average of 11.1%. This disparity in wealth is also exacerbated by criminal history, with post-sentence felons having annual earnings reduced by an average of 52% compared to their possible earnings if they had never served a prison sentence. These monetary stipulations on felon re-enfranchisement effectively bar a significant portion of a specific racial group from participating in Florida’s elections. The absurdity of this obvious discrimination is that it does not technically violate federal law. Without geographic preclearance in place, the federal government has no ability to review and give voice to the large portion of Black Floridians who are barred from voting.
Even in Florida’s own courts, the state legislature’s choice to require the repayment of fines and fees was challenged. In Jones v. DeSantis, District Judge Robert Hinkle determined that the state’s “pay-to-vote system” violated both the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and the 24th Amendment, which banned poll taxes as a requirement of voting. While this decision was overturned by the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the District Court’s opinion established that placing needless stipulations on re-enfranchisement unfairly targets segments of the voting population and results in a less representative election. Although the decision of the District Court was reversed, it nevertheless demonstrates the questionable constitutionality of placing such high barriers on suffrage.
The disproportionate disenfranchisement of Black and low-income voters through felon suffrage policies has contributed to sweeping electoral victories for Republicans in Florida. Nationally, Black voters overwhelmingly support the Democratic Party. Recent findings determined that 76% of adult Black Floridians, including those unable to vote, identify as or lean towards the Democratic Party, while only 8% align with Republicans. Even if the population of disenfranchised Black voters is only somewhat reflective of these statewide statistics, disenfranchising former felons lends Florida Republicans a huge advantage in elections at all levels. With 10% of Florida’s 3.4 million Black citizens disqualified from elections, Democrats lose a sizable portion of their base. This loss of a sizable portion of Black voters leads to significantly less representative elections in Florida.
Florida also has one of the fastest growing Black populations in the US. From 2010 to 2022, the African-American population has increased by 23 percent, or by an estimated 745,000 people. With this expanding Democratic-leaning population, Republicans, which currently make up a supermajority of the Florida Legislature and dominate the state’s executive branch, are even more incentivized to keep Black people out of the polls. Without the legal ability to discriminate outright based on race, placing a paid barrier to suffrage for former felons yields a similar result: keeping Black citizens from exercising their right to vote to create less competitive elections.
With an obvious causal tie between the pay-to-vote re-enfranchisement system and the disproportionate disenfranchisement of Black Floridians, there’s a clear need for federal intervention to protect Black voters. In its implementation of Amendment 4, the Florida state government has proven that they cannot be counted on to protect the voting rights of all citizens—at least not under the Republican supermajority that currently controls the Florida legislative and executive branches. Additionally, the chances of another ballot initiative correcting Florida’s pay-to-vote system is slim. According to the state’s constitution, all such initiatives must pass with a supermajority of 60%. Today, the state’s increasingly red population would be unlikely to vote for a referendum that could be construed as “soft on crime.” The ability of the federal government to review new voting legislation would allow for all Floridians’ rights to be protected. A return to geographic preclearance is the solution to this problem.
Reinstituting geographic preclearance would require certain states to seek a declaratory judgment from the Attorney General or the United States District Court for the District of Columbia before changing prerequisites for voters or introducing new voting procedures. Preclearance has successfully protected Black voters in the past. During the 1968 election, the first presidential election since the introduction of preclearance in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Black Southern voters registered to vote at a rate of 65%. Only four years prior, a little above 50% of Black Southerners were registered to vote, making this a significant jump in registration. After the Supreme Court struck down the process in Shelby v. Holder, the Brennan Center for Justice found that the racial turnout gap grew almost twice as fast in states previously covered by preclearance when compared to similar parts of the country that hadn’t been subject to federal oversight. This gap has been consistently growing since the overturning of preclearance in 2012.
Reinstatement of preclearance would force the federal government to ensure that voting laws restricting felon suffrage do not disproportionately impact people of color. Geographic preclearance could also be used to reevaluate the pay-to-vote implementation of Amendment 4, and strike down similar laws that have been engineered to prevent people of color from voting. Through intentional reform, Americans can protect the very essence of representative democracy––the ability to freely vote regardless of color, creed, or criminal history.
The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is the only clear path to regaining geographic preclearance. The bill would both restore geographic preclearance in covered states and guarantee greater voter protections such as increasing oversight of racially-biased redistricting efforts. The bill was originally introduced in 2021 with House and Senate Republicans continually blocking its passage. Yet, Democrats have continually reintroduced the bill to Congress with many seeing it as the path to greater voter protections. The 119th Congress could provide another opportunity for the bill’s reintroduction, but the bill’s passage requires bipartisan support. With a vote down party lines likely to prevent the bill’s passage once again, it will take the force of many multi-partisan Americans advocating for its passage to make this bill law.
The voting rights of many of the most vulnerable in the country rest upon the federal government. It’s clear that Florida’s felon disenfranchisement creates unfair financial barriers to voting that largely exclude Black citizens from voting and obfuscate the overall democratic process by providing Republicans with less competitive elections statewide. With the state’s government unwilling to correct these disparities through the legislature, new federal legislation is needed to protect the voting rights of all citizens regardless of their criminal history.
With the voting rights of nearly a million Floridians on the line, now is the time to once again protect the right to vote regardless of an American’s race, creed, or color. Voting equality––including the equality of former felons––cannot wait in American democracy.
Gabi Fabozzi (BC ’28) is a staff writer from Orlando, Florida. She’s a first-year studying political science and previously worked in youth organizing across Florida. She can be reached at glf2126@barnard.edu.