Shanteala Mash was 21 when she was convicted of trying to cash bad checks. Already on probation for a grand theft charge, she spent two months in jail. If she lived in New York, California, Texas, or dozens of other states, Mash would be heading for the polls this Election Day. But because Mash lives in Florida, one of six states that permanently disenfranchise felons, the now 28-year-old mother of two is barred from voting on Nov. 2.
Mash, who works for the Broward County, Fla., library system, admits it really didn't bother her when she was first released from jail, but the chaos in Florida surrounding the 2000 presidential vote and her displeasure with the country's progress over the last four years has convinced her that she wants a say. "It's important to stand up for what you want," she says. "You have to be heard. It's much more different if I'm actually voting than if I'm just out there talking."
But in Florida, felons can get their rights back only if they undertake a time-consuming, arduous process that involves appealing to Gov. Jeb Bush and his cabinet, which sits as the state clemency board. Mash applied this spring to restore her rights and is still awaiting a response. She doesn't expect to be able to vote until 2008.
She is far from alone. After the 2000 election, 4.7 million Americans were currently or permanently disenfranchised, with a disproportionate amount being minorities. Nationwide, 13 percent of black men are disenfranchised, according to the Sentencing Project, a prisoner rights group based in Washington, D.C.
Maine and Vermont are the only states that don't restrict prisoners' voting rights, and about a dozen others immediately restore rights once a person has been released from prison. In contrast, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nebraska and Virginia—like Florida—all permanently restrict felons' right to vote. Yet Florida "is the worst," stresses Rashad Robinson, spokesman for the Right to Vote, a New York-based campaign to end felony disenfranchisement nationwide.
In Florida alone, more than 800,000 are unable to vote, far outpacing any other state. Nearly one-third of those who can't vote in Florida are African-American and 12 percent are Hispanic. "Voting is a right. It should not be used as a tool of punishment," says Ryan King, research associate for the Sentencing Project. State-authorized disenfranchisement "dilutes the political voice of a community and a representative government is less representative of the country as a whole."
Degrees of Democracy
Courtenay Strickland, voting rights project director for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in Florida, says the state's disenfranchisement law dates to 1868, when it approved a new Constitution to re-enter the union after the Civil War. The historic poll taxes and literacy tests that barred blacks from voting eventually went by the wayside, but the felon law has remained intact for more than a century. With the law, "the state is creating degrees of citizenship. It's creating something that looks not quite like a democracy," Strickland says.
Although Gov. Bush and the cabinet this summer said 22,000 Floridians were eligible to have their rights automatically restored—following a lawsuit filed against the state on behalf of felons released from prison between 1992 and 2001—those re-enfranchised voters represent only a fraction of those affected by the ex-felon regulation.
Florida again triggered an outcry earlier this year when more than 47,000 registered voters were listed on a state Division of Elections database as ineligible to vote due to felony convictions. The state sought to keep the names on the list secret, but the media filed suit, and a circuit court judge ordered the names be made public.
Upon the list's release, a Miami Herald study found more than 2,100 of those listed already had their voting rights restored by the state cabinet. Nearly two-thirds of those with clemency were registered Democrats, and nearly half were black. Although the list since has been scrapped, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission has urged the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate.
Weathering the Storms
Richard Scher, a University of Florida political science professor, contends that despite the repeated uproars since 2000, "state election officials haven't budged one inch. They're still determined to keep as many people from voting as they possibly can."
Mother Nature also poses problems for the November election. State National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) leaders are calling on the supervisor of elections to determine which precincts were damaged by the four hurricanes this summer that walloped the state in six weeks, and then to notify voters of where they should now cast their ballots. "I felt uncomfortable before the hurricanes, and four hurricanes didn't put me in a very good position," says Adora Obi Nweze, president of the Florida NAACP.
For unforeseen circumstances such as the hurricanes, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act passed in 2002. The law requires election officials to hand out provisional ballots if a voter shows up at the polls and it's not possible to determine if he is registered. However, Florida law says that the ballot will be tossed out if the person voted in the wrong precinct.
Provisional ballots "generally should be very helpful, but unfortunately it was introduced with this flawed caveat," Strickland says. The ACLU argues that even if a person voted in the incorrect precinct, votes for "top of the ballot" offices such as president and vice president should be counted.
The damage to polling stations during the hurricanes and the subsequent delays in registering voters may confuse voters and could cause them to turn up at the incorrect precinct. "Provisional ballots could in some ways become the hanging chads of 2004," says Eliot Mincberg, vice president and legal director for People for the American Way Foundation.
Polling Problems Nationwide
Voter intimidation is also drawing concerns. A study published this year by the NAACP and People for the American Way cites reported cases of voter intimidation. Among them is an Orlando case in which Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) officers are accused of intimidating black voters while investigating voting irregularities in the city's March 2003 mayoral elections. The report says: "Critics have charged that the tactics used by the FDLE have intimidated black voters, which could suppress their turnout in this year's elections."
Beyond Florida, voters' rights activists continue to turn up instances of intimidation. This summer, The Detroit Free Press quoted Michigan State Rep. John Pappageorge saying, "If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time this election." Blacks make up 83 percent of Detroit's population. In Philadelphia in 2003, men driving cars sporting decals that resembled those of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were dispatched to African-American neighborhoods, asking prospective voters for identification.
To counter the problem, People for the American Way, the NAACP, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and other groups hope to post poll monitors in 17 states, including Texas, Illinois, Florida and Ohio. The group, which collaborates under the Election Protection 2004 organization, is targeting "states with a concentrated minority population with a history of voting problems," Mincberg said.
Election Protection 2004 will provide same-day help to voters who run into problems at the polls. The group has set up a hotline at 1-800-OUR-VOTE, and if attorneys are nearby when problems are called in, they'll try to dispatch them to the polling places. Mincberg says, "What really matters, one might argue, isn't who wins or loses, but whether democracy wins or loses."
Freedom
A Magazine from the National Underground Railroad Freedom CenterLosing Their Voice
Thousands of convicted felons in Florida represent the millions across the country who won't be able to vote in the 2004 election.©October 31, 2004 - By Susan Ladika