April 25, 2024

Who said that?

Florida's quote of the day

| 10/15/2020

"This is really unusual — I would say ‘weird’ — by international standards."

-- Chris Uggen, a University of Minnesota sociology professor who co-wrote both the 2016 and 2020 Sentencing Project reports

Florida continues to lead the nation in the number of people unable to vote next month because of a felony conviction, despite the passage of a landmark 2018 constitutional amendment meant to restore their access to the ballot box, according to a study released by a national nonprofit on Wednesday.

Nearly 900,000 Floridians with felony convictions are unable to vote because of a law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis last year, which required them to pay all court fees fines or restitution before voting, according to the study released by the Sentencing Project is a nonprofit that advocates for criminal justice reform

In all, more than 1.1 million Floridians are unable to vote because they have felony convictions or owe court debts, making Florida the “nation’s disenfranchisement leader," the report states. About 15 percent of the state’s Black voting-age population is disenfranchised because of a felony, the report estimates, compared to about 6 percent for the state’s non-Black population.

Florida is home to about 20 percent of the estimated 5.2 million Americans who can’t vote because of a felony conviction, the study states.

Read more at the Tampa Bay Times

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