Restoration amendment a good idea, unlikely to pass

There are several good reasons Florida should automatically restore the voting rights of convicted felons after they get out of prison, and one bad reason it shouldn’t do so.

The Florida Supreme Court has for review the “Voter Restoration Amendment,” which an organization called Floridians for a Fair Democracy is trying to put on the state’s 2018 ballot. The group recently cleared the first hurdle in its petition campaign, collecting more than 70,000 voter signatures, so now Attorney General Pam Bondi will submit the amendment to the seven justices.

The court doesn’t rule on the merits of public initiative amendments. It confines its judicial review to whether a proposal deals with a single subject and whether the brief summary appearing on the ballot accurately informs voters what it’s about. Determining that a petition’s language meets the legal criteria does not mean the justices think we should adopt it.

Bondi will probably brief the court in opposition to automatic restoration. She was opposed to the idea when Gov. Rick Scott and her fellow Cabinet officers reversed ex-Gov. Charlie Crist’s more lenient policy nearly eight years ago. And besides, Floridians for a Fair Democracy probably doesn’t have $25,000 to donate to her political committee.

The long-shot amendment would not apply to inmates convicted of murder or sex offenses. Those offenders would still have to wait several years after getting out, and then go through the long process of applying for their voting rights. But non-violent criminals would automatically be eligible to vote, after they complete their sentences and comply with restitution requirements or other post-release conditions.

The reasons for restoring rights are simple and self-evident. We want offenders to integrate back into society, to resume as normal a life as possible, after years of living in the jungle of prison. Denying them the basics of citizenship is a daily reminder that they are still not quite free, that they are forever branded as something less than the rest of us.

If society expects them to get a job, an education, a place to live and to re-establish normal relationships in a community, why not let them vote? What is accomplished by keeping a foot on their necks?

The fact is, if the amendment passes, a lot of former inmates won’t register – or won’t vote, if they do sign up. A lot of us don’t register or don’t bother voting. Why would we think newly released prisoners are all excited about the choice of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, Patrick Murphy or Marco Rubio?

Also, automatic restoration would relieve the governor and cabinet of a pointlessly time-consuming chore.

All of which brings us to the bad reason for not letting released felons vote: We don’t have to.

Perhaps some federal judge will decide some day that denial has a disparate racial impact, or that the ban is a transparent effort by Republican leaders to disenfranchise a largely Democratic bloc of citizens. But for now, the ban is valid and there is no great public clamor to let ex-cons vote.

If Fair Democracy gets on the ballot, it will have a hard time getting the 60 percent approval required for all constitutional amendments. The reflexive argument against it is, “Oh, yeah, right – like I really care about drug dealers not being able to vote…”

Amending the Constitution via voter signatures sounds like grassroots Democracy, but it’s just the opposite. Not always, but very often, the successful initiative petitions are bankrolled by special interests that profit from them. Or they have a powerful and popular public official behind them, like Gov. Reubin Askew and his 1976 “Sunshine” amendment requiring financial disclosure by public officials in the post-Watergate era.

There is no admired political champion to rally public support for restoring felon voting rights, or any recent spate of scandals like Askew could point to in selling his clean-government amendment. Nor do any companies stand to make a buck off of felons voting.

That means it will be hard for Fair Democracy to raise the money necessary for collecting nearly 700,000 voter signatures, getting them verified at the county, tabulating them at the congressional district level, certifying the whole batch by February of 2018, and then selling their idea to voters in a statewide referendum.

There will be statewide races for the U.S. Senate, governor and all three Cabinet seats in 2018. Having the voting-rights amendment on the ballot would probably do a little to boost voter turnout for the Democrats. On the other hand, the prospect of felon-voting restoration might also draw more conservatives to the polls, to make sure it fails.

Bill Cotterell is a retired Democrat reporter who writes a twice-weekly column for the paper. He can be contacted atbcotterell@tallahassee.com .