Amendments, established a framework
for voting rights in the United States. But
unlike many other countries where the
rules governing the electoral system are
strictly national, U.S. states have broad
discretion in determining qualifications
for suffrage within their jurisdictions and
managing their own election systems.
The result has been a continuous struggle
at both the federal and state levels over
voting rights, particularly over the right
of Black Americans to vote.
The Fifteenth Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution, adopted in 1870, after the
Civil War, states that: ”The right of cit-izens
of the United States to vote shall not
be denied or abridged by the United States
or by any State on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude.” Howev-er,
the Southern states during the Re-construction
period did everything
within their power to maintain
Black disenfranchisement
and thwart the Fifteenth
Amendment. They de-signed
impossible lit-eracy
tests, imposed
poll taxes or just re-sorted
to violence
to stop Blacks
from registering
to vote.
Decades of dis-enfranchisement
and violence fol-lowed,
culminat-ing
in the dramat-ic
march for voting
rights from Selma to
Montgomery, Alabama.
When Rep. John Lewis led
hundreds of marchers across
the Edmund Pettus bridge in March
1965 and was met by brutal attacks from
state law enforcement, the public finally
demanded real change.
A new coverage formula needed
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is con-sidered
to be the most effective piece
of federal civil rights legislation ever
enacted in this country. Its most po-tent
provision was the requirement that
certain states and localities (known as
“covered jurisdictions”) who had a his-tory
of discrimination get preclearance
from the U.S. Attorney General or the
U.S. District Court for D.C. before they
made any changes in voting practices.
This one remedy resulted in enormous
change, particularly in the South. About
one million new voters were registered
within a few years after the bill became
law, bringing African-American regis-tration
to a record 62 percent.
That was the story until 2013. In that
year, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively
gutted the Voting Rights Act (1965) in
Shelby County v. Holder (2013) by strik-ing
down the preclearance formula. The
Court reasoned that the formula that
determined which states needed pre-clearance
for changes in voting rules was
“based on 40-year old facts having no
logical relationship to the present day”.
The majority of the Court said Congress
needed to enact a new coverage formula.
Seven years have passed and Congress
still has not passed the Voting Rights
Amendment Act and the results have
been predictable.
Within 24 hours of the Supreme Court
decision, the floodgates opened, and
states started to impose strict voter ID
requirements, end early voting, close
polling places, purge voters and re-draw
election districts. These actions
were matched by a flurry of lawsuits
to counter these measures (some won,
some lost). But clearly, the Supreme
Court decision has made the right to vote
more problematic in states where there
has been a history of discrimination.
Voting in Florida is not
accepted as a ”right”
Meanwhile, in Florida, a state which
has determined who would be Presi-
The simple theory
that all citizens in a
democracy should
have the right to vote,
while championed as
a principle, has seldom
been accepted in
practice.
dent based on razor-thin voting margins
three times since 2000, a new civil rights
struggle is being fought out.
One of the discriminatory remnants
of the post-Civil War Jim Crow period
in Florida was a lifetime ban on voting
for people with a felony conviction. In
2016, that ban still existed in the Florida
Constitution, disenfranchising people
of color disproportionately. It was es-timated
that 1,6 million potential voters
could not register to vote – 10 percent
of Florida’s voting population!
All attempts to challenge the provi-sion
in the courts were unsuccessful. So
civil rights groups across Florida mount-ed
a major campaign to place a constitu-tional
amendment on the 2016 election
ballot to give the people the opportunity
to reverse this historic injustice. Their
efforts paid off, when the amendment
passed with 65 percent of voters at the
election voting “yes”!
From a global perspective it seems
entirely normal that once individuals are
no longer incarcerated for their crimes,
they should have their voting and civil
rights restored. But voting in Florida is
not universally accepted as a “right”. So,
unsurprisingly, despite the overwhelm-ing
public approved of the amendment,
Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis looked
for a loophole in its drafting to restrict
its implementation. Rather than restore
voting rights after release from incar-ceration
and/or parole, they required,
through legislation, that fees, fines and
restitution that were owed by an indi-vidual
be paid before he or she could
register to vote.
Not only is this financially prohibi-tive
for most people leaving prison, but
they cannot even get reliable informa-
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