Former Mobile County Commissioner Steve Nodine can vote again, thanks to Florida voters' recent approval of Amendment 4, and he has a new political purpose.

He's hoping to help meld hundreds of thousands of newly re-enfranchised former felons into a voting bloc that can promote its own interests and command some respect from both major parties. Whatever opinion people might have about ex-cons, he said, he thinks they can pull together and shake things up in positive ways.

"We're not Democratic, we're not Republican," he said. "There's a bond of which no party can touch … There is much in common."

"It was one of the greatest educations of my life, being in a jail, being in federal prison," he said. "Not an education I wanted to get, obviously, but I learned a lot."

Nodine was an irrepressible force in Mobile politics a decade ago, serving as a Mobile City Council member and then a Mobile County Commissioner, with abundant speculation of a shot at higher office. All that fell apart starting with a misdemeanor drug charge in 2009 and the 2010 death of his mistress. Nodine, who was married, was charged with murder in the death of Angel Downs but never convicted; his defense argued that Downs had committed suicide.

Nodine did however serve prison time for state charges of perjury, harassment and an ethics violation and also for a federal charge of being an unlawful drug user in possession of firearms. He has since sought to have the guilty plea on the gun charge overturned; he said he's also filed a request for a presidential pardon on it. Since being freed he's made a few headlines for probation violations.

More to the point he has moved back to his native Florida, where he has retained his interest in politics. He had a stake in this month’s voting, though he wasn’t yet eligible to cast a ballot. “I was part of the recount team for Rick Scott down in Palm Beach County,” he said Wednesday. He added that he was among a group of monitors and wasn’t actually handling ballots.

While he had personal reason to be excited about the success of Amendment 4, he said, he also started thinking about the broader ramifications. Florida has a reputation for major elections decided by thin margins and controversial recounts. This time around was no different, but Amendment 4 potentially has added 1.5 million voters to the rolls next time around. (It doesn't apply to those convicted of murder or felony sex crimes, and requires people to complete all terms of their sentences before regaining the right to vote.)

Nodine is in the process of launching an initiative called Florida's Second Chance Voters. At the moment its public presence consists solely of a week-old Facebook page. Limited media attention so far has been based on Nodine's notoriety rather than anything Florida's Second Chance Voters has actually done.

Nodine says a website is on the way, and a nonpartisan platform of issues, and he's confident he's working fertile ground. By the time the next national election cycle heats up, he hopes to have 200,000 to 400,000 people involved, including both felons and family members affected by their loved ones' time in the justice system.

Given Florida’s history of messy impacts on national politics, Nodine’s effort has prompted a suggestion, or two, that the Republican Party should reach out to folks who might be casting their first vote in 10-to-20 in 2020. Nodine, a Republican, says he’s spoken with party officials and activists who supported Amendment 4 and are open to the possibilities. And he thinks that the national opioid abuse epidemic, among other factors, has “flipped the demographic” of the prison population, putting in more people who might have hewed to conservative middle- and working-class norms if they hadn’t fallen into addiction.

But he also thinks some of the potential new bloc's main concerns won't be strictly partisan. Having experienced the business end of the justice system, he said, they'll be keenly interested in justice reforms and in making it easier for those who've served their time to build new lives. Their common bond will be especially strong "when it comes to overcoming the obstacles society has placed upon us."

One price of those obstacles, he said, is that people who've paid their debt to society remain unable to rejoin it productively.

"People don't realize that once you have your rights taken away, you have a sense of detachment from the community and society," he said.

He also jokes that as a former political consultant, he sees certain advantages in trying to build a database of former felons.

“It’s much easier, I can tell you,” he said, “because we’re already in the system.”