Voting Rights for Felons

Convicted felons are one of the most disenfranchised groups of people, and among the things they are barred from, one of them is voting. Here is an article about voting rights for felons in Florida. 

An excerpt: 

"When Riddle got out, she and her daughter opened a food truck, called No Place Like Home, that served Southern cooking. She began attending classes in Bradenton, one county over, to earn a paralegal degree. Between working and studying, Riddle volunteered in the public defender’s office, where the staff knew her from her criminal days. 'I’d cussed out the lawyers so bad, that’s why they remembered me,' she said. Now, though, the attorneys found that her patient manner put defendants at ease, and in 2016 the office hired her. She bought a house and a car. 'I learned I can do anything if I put my mind to it,' she said. But one thing she could not do was vote."

Being a swing state, Florida is a battleground during national elections. The largest demographic that is affected by laws barring felons from voting are African Americans. Desmond Meade, a former felon and now lawyer, began collecting signatures on "a petition to abolish the voting prohibition on all but the most violent felons," enough so that it was put on a state ballot. However, "six months after Amendment Four passed, the Republican-dominated legislature approved a law dictating that ex-felons could vote only if they first paid all the fines, restitution, and fees imposed at their sentencing. The law may affect as many as seven hundred and seventy thousand Florida residents, about half of whom are Black." 

I think this in an obvious attack on working class felons, who already have a hard time getting jobs because of the (most of the time) arbitrary and oppressive title assigned to them. Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow says that "The notion that if you’ve ever committed a crime you're permanently disposable is the very idea that has rationalized mass incarceration in the United States." And we know that many former felons were convicted from the disastrous War on Drugs. Republicans in Florida are leveraging this idea to pass laws that bar felons from voting. Perhaps they really believe in this; or maybe they have an ulterior motive. Either way, it has resulted in Republicans having complete control of both legislative bodies and the governorship, which probably shouldn't be the case, given that the state is, literally, a swing state. 

Florida has a gerrymandering problem, too: