Of the states that swung to Donald Trump in 2016 after voting for Barack Obama in 2012, Florida, with its 29 votes in the Electoral College, was by far the biggest. It's also one of the most prominent examples of how voter suppression efforts are distorting the political system, usually to benefit Republicans who would struggle to win in a more representative democracy. Florida's law bans anyone convicted of a felony from voting, for the rest of their lives. This means that nearly 1.7 million Floridians — more than one in 10 voting-age adults — are permanently barred from the polls.

Hillary Clinton lost the Sunshine State by fewer than 120,000 votes, strongly suggesting that more inclusive voting rights law could -- and probably would -- have swung Florida in the other direction.

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Now a group of grassroots activists with Floridians for a Fair Democracy and the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition is working to change the law. Activists have been circulating a statewide petition to create a ballot initiative in November 2018 that would restore the rights of those convicted of a felony to vote after they have completed their sentence. The campaign is on track for success, at least in getting the initiative on the ballot. With one month to go until the deadline, nearly 85 percent of the ballots necessary to succeed have been signed by Florida voters.

While Trump's narrow and implausible electoral victory has drawn attention to the issue of voter suppression, for many working on the campaign it's less about electoral politics and more about basic issues of fairness in the criminal justice system.

“These individuals have all done their time, they’ve paid their debt, and it’s the right thing to do," Jen Tolentino of Rock the Vote, which has been supporting the grassroots activists in Florida, told Salon. "Once somebody has served their time, they should have the ability to actually be reintroduced to our community and participate in a meaningful way.”

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“If you have a car note or a mortgage payment, once you pay that last payment, you don’t expect to keep getting a bill in the mail," said Desmond Meade, who is leading the statewide campaign to re-enfranchise ex-felons. "These folks paid their debt years and years ago, yet they’re still being made to pay on the debt that they’ve already paid in full.”

Meade has a personal connection to this issue, as someone who was convicted of a felony more than a decade ago. After being released in 2004, Meade told Salon, he had a difficult period that included homelessness, drug addiction and suicidal impulses. Despite all those challenges, he made a point of going to college and then getting a law degree so he could dedicate his life to public service. But even though Meade went through the arduous process of trying to regain his right to vote by appealing to the governor for clemency, he was denied.

“My wife ran for office last election cycle," he added. "And in spite of all I’ve done to turn my life around, I was still not able to vote for her.”

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Florida's permanent disenfranchisement of convicted felons "really was a Jim Crow law that was adopted in 1868,” explained Samuel Sinyangwe of StayWoke, which is also supporting the campaign.

Historians have documented that felon disenfranchisement laws were drafted in the years following the Civil War with the express intention of disqualifying black voters who had only recently won suffrage rights. Original versions of the laws would often specifically flag felonies that lawmakers believed black people were more likely to be convicted of, while excluding felonies seen as more likely to be committed by whites. That inequity persists today, with black people more likely to be arrested, convicted and harshly sentenced than white people who commit the same crimes.

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These laws have never had anything to do with reducing crime, Sinyangwe pointed out.

“There is no evidence that taking away people’s right to vote disincentivizes people from committing crimes," he said, adding that it's "just not a consideration" on people's minds when they choose to break the law.

On the contrary, Sinyangwe argued that this is "part of a broader conversation about re-entry and restoration and rehabilitation of people" who have done their time. Preliminary research indicates a correlation between re-enfranchisement and lower recidivism, though more needs to be done to measure voting rights alone as a factor.

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