Republicans in Florida will see the poor and people of color driven back off the voter rolls if it’s the last thing they do. On Tuesday the state’s House Criminal Justice Subcommittee passed along a new bill that would reverse much of the progress made by a widely popular amendment that restored voting rights to felons last November.
Prior to its passage Florida was one of the four states in the country that denied felons the right to vote and it was also coincidentally the first to institute a poll tax which this new thing sounds a lot like and clearly is. […]
It’s about punishing them for being poor
To spell it out a little more, this only works in tandem with the over-policing of communities of color, which lead to disproportionate arrests even when taking similar incomes in account. When people of color fade the brunt of the criminal system, any change to how those processes through the criminal system is a change made to impact people of color.
Like any other barrier created to reduce access to voting, its primary goal is to prevent marginalized people—who are less likely to vote conservative—from voting at all. Ones like this also serve the purpose of further extracting capital from already vulnerable populations, which helps keep them in vulnerable positions.
If people can’t pay—and the fees are designed to be exhorbitant!—and that includes having to choose to pay for other things that are more immediately essential, they don’t vote. And if they do pay, that’s more money that is used to further police these same communities
And it’s also clearly in response to felon voter rights being restored too 😞
