Shortly after the 11th U.S. Circuit Court ruled that Florida’s felons cannot vote until they pay court fines and fees, Democratic U.S. Rep. Val Demings announced Friday she introduced a bill to prohibit states from denying federal voting rights to citizens regardless of prior criminal convictions.
Demings’ bill, House Resolution 8101, was filed in late August. It seeks to do what Amendment 4 backers have been fighting for in the Florida Legislature and in courts since Florida voters approved that measure in 2018: restoration of voting rights, at least in federal elections, to people whom activists such as Desmond Meade call “returning citizens.”
At issue in the Florida case is whether the amendment’s requirement that felons complete all their court-ordered obligations should include fines, fees, and restitution. Advocates say those monetary sums can be out of reach for many felons struggling to put their lives together after serving prison sentences.
Reversing a lower court judge’s decision that gave Florida felons the right to vote regardless of financial obligations, the order from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the position of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the GOP-led state Legislature.
Friday’s 200-page ruling, delivered on a 6-4 vote, concluded that the Constitution’s due process clause was not violated by the passage of the law implementing Amendment 4.
Demings is a former police chief who served 26 years as an officer in Orlando. She entitled her proposal “Every American Has the Right to Vote Act.”
“Every American should have the right and the responsibility to participate in our democracy. I enforced the law for nearly three decades. Anyone who commits a crime should be held accountable. But committing a crime does not remove your humanity and it should not silence your voice. A debt to society must be paid, but that debt should never include our right to vote,” she wrote in a news release.
“Efforts to exclude these Americans from voting — either directly or through convoluted poll tax schemes — go against our fundamental principle that our government must be answerable to the people. A criminal conviction does not erase a person from our communities or our country,” she added.
Her resolution would “prohibit states from denying or abridging the right to vote in elections for federal office of individuals on the grounds of conviction of a criminal offense, and for other purposes.”
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. Our fundamental rights are rooted in our basic humanity. We can live up to America’s promise.”
This article first appeared at Florida Politics.
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This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2020.
