A bill to be considered Tuesday in a Florida House committee would create new obstacles to restoring ex-felons’ voting rights mandated by Amendment 4, activists said Monday.

The House Criminal Justice Committee’s bill is the culmination of months of arguments about whether Amendment 4, which passed in November with almost 65 percent of the vote, would be watered down by the Legislature – or even whether lawmakers needed to pass any implementation bill at all.

The bill “is an affront to Florida voters,” said Kirk Bailey, political director for the ACLU of Florida, who said it was “overbroad, vague, [and] thwarts the will of the people … This is exactly what we were worried about from the beginning.”

Advocates’ worries began after Gov. Ron DeSantis said in December that the amendment shouldn’t take effect until the Legislature clarified some of its language. The ACLU and the Florida Rights Restoration Commission, the Orlando-based group that led the push for the amendment, have both argued the amendment was self-implementing and needed no such law.

Despite DeSantis’s comments, former felons have been registering to vote since the amendment took effect on Jan. 8.

Neil Volz, political director of the rights commission, said the bill requires that court fines, fees and other “financial obligations” such as civil court judgments would have to be paid off in full before voting rights are restored.

The amendment’s language states that “voting rights shall be restored upon completion of all terms of [a] sentence, including parole or probation.”

Such fines, fees and obligations can be arbitrarily added well after a judge’s official sentencing, Volz said.

“To allow a government employee or financial institution to determine whether someone can or cannot vote is not a good idea,” Volz said.

Bailey added that the bill “will inevitably prevent individuals from voting based on the size of one’s bank account.”

The bill also adds new definitions for what constitutes a felony sexual offense, one of two exceptions along with murder, of crimes for which former felons would not automatically get their voting rights back.

While there had been discussions about expanding the definition of murder to include attempted murder and manslaughter, in the end the bill only lists first- and second-degree murder as exceptions.

But the bill does add dozens of sex-related offenses to the list of crimes that bar felons from automatically getting voting rights back, including trafficking and locating an adult entertainment store within 2,500 feet of a school.

House Criminal Justice Chair James Grant, R-Tampa, told The News Service of Florida he instructed staff to include all felony sex offenses in the legislation.

“When the Constitution says ‘felony sex offenses’ and that means nothing legally, the best I can do is propose a list of felonies that are sexual,” said Grant, a lawyer. “The reality is I’m going to do my best effort to maintain what I believe the rule of law now requires in a super-ambiguous constitutional amendment.”

The bill also appeared to place the onus on county supervisors of elections to determine whether an applicant is ineligible and require them to send notices to registered voters explaining why they can no longer vote after a felony conviction, including federal felonies from other states.

The bill also would require the departments of State and Corrections to share information on a voter’s or potential voter’s felony history and eligibility.

Previously, there was no one database shared by the departments of State or Corrections, and the DOC would only investigate a felon’s history after he or she applied for clemency.

News Service of Florida contributed to this report. slemongello@orlandosentinel.com, 407-418-5920, @stevelemongello, facebook/stevelemongello