Midterms 2018: Will rehabilitated Florida felons finally get to vote?

Analysis: An estimated 1.6 million Floridians are unable to vote because of past felony convictions; but as Clark Mindock explains in Miami, a new initiative could mean they go to the polls in 2020

Even minor transgressions are penalised with disenfranchisement (AFP/Getty)

Brett Ramsden is a soft-spoken, unassuming Florida father and political organiser who in many ways embodies the community spirit crucial to the American electoral system – except for the fact he cannot vote himself.

For the past year or so, Mr Ramsden has been helping to organise a massive effort to convince voters in the state to approve amendment 4. That would restore the right to vote to more than a million people – roughly one in 10 of the eligible voters in Florida – who have been disenfranchised following criminal convictions. The measure will be voted on as part of the midterm elections in the state.

Those affected include many people like Mr Ramsden, a man caught up in a criminal justice system after a string of petty thefts five years ago while in the throes of opioid addiction, who spent a court-ordered year in substance abuse treatment, and who has put his life together.

Mr Ramsden served his time, has since married, had a daughter (now 13 months old), and holds a steady job. But, when it comes to one of the most basic duties of citizenship, Mr Ramsden is still barred from voting.

“I feel like I don’t have a voice,” said Mr Ramsden, when asked about the upcoming 2018 midterm elections by The Independent. He added: “I have no say in that. I have no say in how that’s going to shape the world for my daughter.”

Mr Ramsden, the Florida Justice Initiatives director at the Christian Coalition of America, is one of an estimated 6.1 million people in the US who cannot vote as the result of a felony conviction. That number has risen from an estimated 1.17 million just over four decades ago, according to a 2016 estimate by the Sentencing Project. The latest figure includes an estimated 1.6 million people who have completed felony sentences in Florida alone – a group of people that would have represented roughly 9.2 per cent of the voting-age population in the state in 2016.

If Florida approves amendment 4, the measure would dramatically reshape one of the nation’s harshest voting laws for those with felony convictions – which has its roots in the abolition of slavery after the Civil War – and automatically restore a person’s right to vote after a sentence is served.

Individuals convicted of murder or felony sex offences would remain unable to vote.

Rashmi Airan is another convicted felon who has been denied the right to vote in Florida, and who has devoted her post-conviction life to changing that state of affairs. She says that voting would help decrease recidivism rates, and promote re-engagement in community after prison.

After pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud charges in 2014, Ms Airan received a one-year sentence in federal prison, a $19m judgement against future earnings, and three years of supervised release.

A mother of two, Ms Airan now conducts national speaking tours on ethics to highlight the blind spots that can arise alongside the drive to succeed that led to her crimes – she says that growing up in an achievement-driven Indian-American family pushed her determination to be successful and eventually to commit financial crimes.

“Once a judge has given a judgement for an individual who has been convicted of a crime, and that individual satisfies the judgement – and that could include incarceration, supervised release, community service hours, restitution, and maybe some more – once that has been satisfied, you have, I think the ability to say, point blank, that that individual has paid their debt to society,” Ms Airan said.

If amendment 4 passes, the black population in Florida would be poised to benefit the most – but the ranks of the disenfranchised span across all races and classes in the state.

In 2016, 418,000 black people had finished sentences but were denied the ability to vote, according to the Sentencing Project, representing roughly 17.9 per cent of the more than 2.3 million potential black voters in the state. But, as the proved by the cases of Mr Ramsden, a white man, and Ms Airan, an Indian-American woman, there are no easy stereotypes.

“I think people have a skewed image of who a felon is,” says Keith den Hollander, national field director at the Christian Coalition of America and Brett Ramsden’s boss.

Mr Hollander noted that he himself has come to realise that American felons do not fit a particular mould since he started working on the amendment 4 campaign and other similar efforts around the country.

“I might have thought of a skinhead with tattoos and gauges in his ears,” Mr Hollander said. “But it definitely wasn’t Brett.”

As things stand, amendment 4 – which has drawn support from a diverse group of stakeholders – appears to have a good chance of success. The measure needs 60 per cent approval to pass, and the most recent polls indicate that 66 per cent of Florida voters back it, while 25 per cent oppose and 8 per cent are undecided.

The polls suggest that support comes from across the ideological spectrum, ranging from conservative groups such as Mr Ramsden’s, to more liberal groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union. The Koch brothers-backed Freedom Partners also supports the initiative, as do Floridians for Fair Democracy, which gathered more than 1.1 million signatures on its petition to put the amendment on the ballot.

Mr Ramsden says he is among the more fortunate to have been caught up in the criminal justice system that has kept its grip on his right to vote.

His parents could afford to help him to go through treatment abuse counselling after his conviction, and he has been able to put his life together in the years since he transgressed.

He knows how significant this vote is.

“My platform has allowed me to have a voice for the less fortunate,” he said. “It’s a fundamental right as American citizens. How many people have fought and died for that right?”