Florida: No Voting, Because, F%$# You

The Florida legislature has passed, and the governor is certain to sign, a bill prohibiting the ex-cons recently given the right to vote from actually casting a ballot.

The bill says that they have to make full restitution for all fines and court costs, but the judiciary is so screwed up in the state, much like everything else in that Gid-forsaken sh%$ hole, that most of the now freed prisoners will have no way of knowing if they continue to owe money to the courts:

In November, Florida voters approved a groundbreaking ballot measure that would restore voting rights for up to 1.5 million people with felony convictions. But the Republican-led Legislature voted on Friday to impose a series of sharp restrictions that could prevent tens of thousands of them from ever reaching the ballot box.

In a move that critics say undermines the spirit of what voters intended, thousands of people with serious criminal histories will be required to fully pay back fines and fees to the courts before they could vote. The new limits would require potential new voters to settle what may be tens of thousands of dollars in financial obligations to the courts, effectively pricing some people out of the ballot box.

“Basically, they’re telling you, ‘If you have money, you can vote. If you don’t have money, you can’t,’” said Patrick Penn, 42, who spent 15 years in prison for strong-arm robbery and a violent burglary. He said he does not know whether he owes money to the court, but worries it could now prove a complication when he gets ready to cast a ballot. “That’s not what the people voted for.”

With the House voting 67-42 along party lines on Friday to endorse the new restrictions, the legislation goes next to Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had called on the Legislature to set additional standards for registering ex-felons to vote.

The vast majority of criminal defendants are poor when they are arrested and even poorer after they are released from prison.

The new restrictions have been attacked by civil rights groups and some of the initiative’s backers as an exercise in Republican power politics, driven by fears that people with felony convictions are mostly liberals who could reshape the electorate ahead of presidential elections in 2020 and beyond. Republicans have dominated Florida’s state government for more than two decades, but elections are often decided by a fraction of a percentage point.

It's a poll tax, and hopefully the courts will invalidate it, at least until the Supreme Court enforces, in a 5-4 decision the constitutional principle that n*****s don't get to vote.

To quote JFK,^* "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

^*For once, I am not quoting "Not really Tallyrand, but attributed to him."