While we wait for the words of wisdom from Camp Runamuck, let’s amuse ourselves with the latest news from Florida, which proudly and resolutely declines to get its act together when it comes to holding elections. (And yes, this is going to be a big, honking issue next fall.) In 2018, the state passed a completely sensible law enabling convicted felons to regain the franchise after serving their time. But, as Mark Joseph Stern reports in Slate, this is still Florida, and it’s going to Florida-up our elections, because that’s simply what it does.

For more than a year, Florida’s politicians have been embroiled in a fight over Amendment 4, which 65 percent of Florida voters approved in 2018. Amendment 4 abolished a Jim Crow era law that permanently stripped the right to vote from anyone convicted of a felony. But Florida Republicans quickly kneecapped it, passing a bill that forced individuals to pay all fines and fees associated with their sentences before regaining their voting rights. This legislative assault on Amendment 4 threatened to take away the franchise from more than 1.1 million Floridians; the state is a pioneer of cash register justice, imposing a mind-boggling array of “user fees” on defendants to finance its criminal justice system.

Now, there’s a strong element of ni shagu nazad in what the Florida Republicans are doing, as there is in all attempts by the GOP to suppress the votes of citizens whose politics it finds inconvenient. However, as Stern points out, there is some evidence that the current strategy may self-detonate.

A Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald analysis found that 52 percent of Floridians who lost their voting rights because of a felony conviction were Democrats. A third were independents, while just 14 percent were Republicans. In recent years, black voters were five times more likely to lose their voting rights than white voters; Democrats were three times more likely to lose their voting rights than Republicans. Overall, the majority of former felons in the state are white.

Given these odds, GOP-controlled counties will undoubtedly suppress the votes of some Democratic ex-felons within their borders. But they may well depress their own turnout numbers in a tight election year while their neighbors gain voting power.



Maybe so, but my innate clairvoyance is showing me a nearly limitless vista of nuisance lawsuits aimed at the Democratic counties that have restored the franchise to ex-felons. And the inevitable countersuits. And the inevitable Florida, which often mistakes chaos for democracy.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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