And even those who can pay face a Catch-22: Because there is no central database of court fines and fees, it is difficult or impossible to establish how much anyone owes. As of May, the state had failed to process any of the more than 85,000 voting registration applications submitted by former felons since Amendment 4 passed in late 2018.

“It has been a very long slog to change public opinion on the re-enfranchisement of felons, and it took millions of dollars and a lot of effort to get that initiative passed,” said Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford University law professor. “The idea that felons would then have to pay money in order to vote after being enfranchised is depressing.”

In the past year, the governors of Kentucky and Iowa — the only remaining states that disenfranchised all former felons — signed executive orders restoring voting rights to those who have completed their sentences, including parole and probation. Unlike Florida, neither required payment of fines, court fees or restitution.

Florida is hardly the only state where legislators have taken aim at a measure that voters had approved.

Missouri’s Republican-controlled Legislature has placed a constitutional amendment on the November ballot that bills itself as a package of clean-government reforms but actually undoes a 2018 amendment that took redistricting out of the Legislature’s control and gave it to a nonpartisan state demographer. Utahans narrowly voted in 2018 to make political map-drawing a nonpartisan affair, only to see that state’s Republican Legislature water down the measure to allow politicians to retain effective control of the process.

And a host of legislatures nettled by voter-approved initiatives in 2018 have passed laws making it substantially harder for citizens to get initiatives on the ballot.

Florida’s Amendment 4 said voting rights would be automatically restored for former felons “after they complete all terms of their sentence including parole or probation.” Once the measure took effect in January 2019, felons started registering.

Source: New York Times

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