Demand #MoreThan4: A Petition to Restore Felon Voting Rights Without Discrimination
Target: Andrew Gillum and Ron Desantis, Candidates for FL Governor
When prisoners called for a nationwide strike last month, access to the ballot was one of their primary demands.
By now, as a result of the Amendment 4 campaign, most of the country knows that Florida is among the worst states for re-enfranchising voters.
But Amendment 4 has a serious flaw that must be acknowledged. Yes, if it passes it would restore voting rights to over a million people, and yet it would also create a nationally-unprecedented level of discrimination against at least 70,000 people convicted of murder and sex offenses. Crimes that have nothing to do with voting.
For this reason, the Human Rights Defense Center (HRDC) has created an Amendment 4 Fact Sheet and is calling on both gubernatorial candidates to commit to an automatic restoration of voting rights for all and immediate dismissal the State’s pending appeal on a court ruling in the case Hand v. Scott, which called the current rights restoration process unconstitutional.
[Signatures will be sent periodically to both gubernatorial candidates’ campaigns between now and the election, and the winner of the election after Nov 6, 2018. ]
Why is this exclusion a problem?
1. It is contrary to the goals of rehabilitation and re-integration for citizens convicted of a felony and who have been sentenced by a court of law, where they were supposed to have “paid their debt to society.”
2. It disregards evidence that has shown the state’s criminal justice and prison systems as plagued by corruption, abuse, and racism which manifest in the form of wrongful convictions, prosecutorial misconduct, excessive juvenile prosecution and over-sentencing that disproportionately impacts low-income people and people of color.
3. Florida would become the only state in the country to specifically limit people’s restoration of rights based on the labels associated with their convictions, further developing a culture of exclusion that keeps people in a permanent underclass.
The vast majority of people who have completed their sentences for convictions of “murder” and “sex offense” are law abiding, tax paying citizens. (Note: cases with these charges can be very complex, for example, involving claims of self-defense, entrapment or jury bias.)
Disenfranchisement in FL dates back to the transition from slavery to mass incarceration in the 1860s, and despite efforts to address this in recent decades, it gotten worse under the current Governor, who made the process near impossible in April 2011, in a blatant attempt to limit his opposition at the polls.
There are states in the U.S. and over a dozen entire countries around the world (including our neighbors in Canada) where even current prisoners retain access to the ballot, regardless of criminal charges, treating the vote as a fundamental right rather than a privilege. This should be the goal.
Join HRDC in demanding #MoreThan4 and an end to discrimination in voter re-enfranchisement. CLICK HERE TO READ, SIGN AND SHARE THIS PETITION!
Thank you for taking action with us,
Paul Wright
Director, Human Rights Defense Center
Editor, Prison Legal News
P.S. If you support HRDC’s work to stand up for currently and formerly incarcerated people, please make a contribution HERE. |
Right now Andrew Gillum holds 6 point lead over Desantis…. Tampa Tribue times 1 day ago
Let us Not attempt to change the law before it becomes one!!! That’s like placing the cart before the horse.
Many registered citizens won’t sign this in fear of being attacked from anyone that see’s them trying to re-join society. There should at least be a time limit on keeping people tied to a legal system that disregards the well known documented studies of recidivism and actual danger posed to the public. This has been for a long time, a vote based agenda by politicians that use the heart strings of people to remain in power. Enforcing law is one thing, but to continue to pile on additional rules, regulations, ordinances and restrictions are a ploy to catch someone breaking them only to send them back to prison on a technicality…
Your going to need more than petitions to get things done. You must do things that force officials to agree because the alternative would be a threat to them. Step one of many steps is boycotting all products and services of registry countries.
The opposite of “buy American,” then.
Although a boycott would be unlikely to force officials to do anything, either.
Did you know that FAC recently filed a lawsuit in Federal court? It demanded, among other things, that officials immediately cease and desist from enforcing Florida’s sex offender statutes and was very nicely argued.
Petitions do have their place, though.
Signed and passed on.
Amendment #4 is like telling the African Americans (back in the 60s) they won their right to vote, but only if they weren’t too black, or people in general that everyone gets to vote except for people with Blond hair…… See how ridiculous this Amendment is?