His last night as a prisoner in North Florida, Kelvin Bolton couldn’t sleep. After serving a 2 1/2 year sentence for theft and battery, he was now fifty-five. His hair was the same shade as the gray flecks. The last time he’d seen his brothers and sisters at a big family gathering, he’d marched onto the dance floor ostentatiously, turned away and wrapped his arms around himself to caress his own back. Everyone laughed as he danced to the music.
Bolton was so close now to being free and seeing his loved ones again. He was dressed in street clothes the next morning on a Wednesday in April and was ready to go when the woman who processed his paperwork stopped him.
“The lady said, ‘Hold on, you can’t go anywhere,’” Bolton remembered in a recent phone call.
He was confused, so he asked her. She recalled. She gruffly explained that he was wanted for arrest for 2020 incidents. It was impossible. He’d been in jail at the time, awaiting his prison stint.
Bolton was loaded into a van by guards, who drove an hour and a quarter south to drop him off at Alachua County Jail.
There, he found out what he’d done wrong.
He’d voted.
Amendment 4, which was a historic initiative on the ballot that restored the right of voting to residents of states with felony convictions, was approved by Florida voters in an overwhelming majority. Until then, Florida had been one of only four states — the others were Iowa, Kentucky and Virginia — where people who had committed felonies needed to petition the governor to have their voting rights restored. It was a legacy of 19th-century laws that were passed after African American men were granted the right to vote.
Supporters applauded that the law restored voting rights for over 1,000,000 people in Florida, roughly 5% of Florida’s total population.
But the state’s dominant Republican lawmakers quickly installed a financial hurdle to those new rights. They passed a law the following year to clarify that felonies convicted could not vote unless they had paid off any money owed. Voting without registering is punishable by a felony for voter fraud.
Although the mandate looked reasonable on the surface, even advocates for Amendment 4 agreed with the fact that the law required victims to pay fines and restitution. In Florida, however, that task proved a sometimes insurmountable challenge — one that disproportionately hit Black people. Florida does not have a central database that allows people to determine their legal financial obligations to the state. Instead, each of the state’s 67 counties and agencies maintains their own databases. The state does away with information about federal or out-ofstate convictions that people are required to pay before they can vote.
Florida also adds court fees, which can easily reach the hundreds of dollars, on top of the fines or restitution. Together, a voter’s debt can run into the thousands, a financial hole that some may never climb out of.
“That’s kind of the bottom line of the absurdity of this — it’s Kafkaesque,” said Dan Smith, chair of the political science department at the University of Florida. “It’s very troubling that we would have state attorneys prosecuting individuals who did not know their status, and there was no way for them to determine their status.”
Florida’s voting hurdles are part of a national pattern. Republican state lawmakers have been implementing voting reforms for years across the country. new restrictive voting lawsThese include limiting voter-by-mail ballot access, stricter voter identification rules, and limits on early voting. These efforts have intensified since Donald Trump’s false claims that Joe Biden stole 2020’s presidential election, Democrats have, however, pushed to expand voting access.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis boasted that in 2020, Florida, a swing state with a history of contentious elections, “held the smoothest, most successful election of any state in the country,” while he also signed a flurry of voting law changes that he said would further strengthen the integrity of future votes. DeSantis has also endorsed the prosecution of people convicted for felonies related to voter fraud. He was convicted of felonies for voter fraud in April. signed a billThe establishment of the Office of Election Crimes and Security that will investigate allegations of election violations.
Despite the increased scrutiny, voting fraud remains so rare in Florida that it hasn’t come close to altering election outcomes. The Florida Department of StateAccording to the agency, 262 election fraud complaints were received in 2020. Only 75 of these were referred to law enforcement and prosecuting authorities.
“Florida is an outlier, because the intentional targeting of citizens with felony convictions as a way to undermine democracy has been a throughline in that state,” said Nicole Porter, senior director of advocacy for the Sentencing Project. “And the attempt to address that, by popular vote, has been undermined by the legislature.”
A representative from Alachua County Supervisor for Elections conducted outreach efforts at the county jail in 2020 to inform inmates about their new rights and offer assistance to them to add their names to the voter roll.
The official helped to sign up at most 10 inmates during three visits, including John Boyd Rivers and Dedrick Baldwin.
Rivers, 44, felt a visceral thrill at this prospect. In February 2020, Rivers was being held in jail for hitting his wife with a baton. The county representative informed him that he could register to be a voter. The official, he said, told him that he could disregard the check box on the form that asks whether the applicant has a felony conviction because he didn’t have a disqualifying felony. Rivers thought that was strange, as he had been convicted of a felony in the past. He was later sentenced for the battery offense. No one told him anything about needing to pay off his financial obligations before registering to vote, Rivers said, and the jail didn’t give him an accounting of those debts when he was later released.
Rivers was delighted when his voter card arrived in the mail back at home. He’d lost his right to vote at 18, he said, after voting just once. He could now vote in a presidential election. He and his wife went to the polling place and cast their vote for Donald Trump.
Bolton was thrilled to sign up, too. He also said no one told him he’d need to pay off his debts before casting his ballot. He said that he registered as Republican but decided to vote for Biden.
All told, 10 men who were registered to vote by the official were charged with voterfraud on the grounds that they were not eligible.
Their alleged illegal voting was first spotted by a citizen who analyzed Florida’s voting rolls and then shared the information with the state. After an eight-month investigation, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement identified the 10 inmates.
State investigators discovered that some jail staff remembered the elections official giving clear instructions to inmates about how to pay their financial obligations. Others did not. The investigation concluded that the jail visits were “lacking in both quality and longevity” and “showed a haphazard registration of inmates.” But the state prosecutor nevertheless proceeded with charges, although not against county officials.
Officials at Alachua Supervisor of Elections declined to comment. ProPublica. Kim Barton, the Supervisor of Elections denied any wrongdoing. a statementPublication in June
Brian Kramer, the state attorney for the Eighth Judicial Circuit of Florida, defended his office’s prosecutions to ProPublicaHe stated that he believed the men were aware they were committing fraud. “I’m not going to say I will prosecute or not prosecute because it’s politically popular or unpopular,” he said.
Four of the ten have pleaded guilty to being sentenced to between three and three years in prison. Bolton and three other defendants have pledged to stand trial while the two remaining suspects await arraignment. They could be sentenced to up to five year imprisonment, five-year probation, or $5,000 fines. Two of the eight men are black, while two are white.
Critics claim the charges are unfair and excessive. The state prosecutor is located nearby in Lake County. declined to bring chargesagainst sex offenders, who had registered to vote despite the law banning restoration of voting rights for those charged with sex crimes or murder. Two white men from Sumter County, which is overwhelmingly white, pleaded guilty in April to casting two ballots for Donald Trump during 2020. Instead of facing criminal prosecution, they entered an agreement. pretrial intervention programThey must also complete 50 hours of community service and take part in an adult civics class. Men in Alachua County who have been convicted of felony offenses in the past are not eligible for pretrial intervention. They will be sentenced to harsher terms.
“I’m thinking I’m doing something good for the community, so that’s why I chose to try to do it,” Bolton said. “It was not malicious — I was not trying to commit a felony of voting fraud. I never would have voted.”
Baldwin, 47, was sentenced to an additional 364-day term for a manslaughter conviction. He felt “set up,” he said, since nobody told him he wasn’t eligible.
“There’s no way Biden was that important to me to vote for him,” he said in an email to ProPublicaFrom prison. “We were flat out tricked into voting.”
The elections official who visited the jail denied telling the men that they could disregard the check box and said he warned them that they’d need to pay off their financial obligations, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to be named because he feared reprisals. The elections official declined to comment. ProPublicaThis is the record.
Rivers was especially hurt by the voter fraud charges. By the time they were filed, Rivers said, he had already used part of his federal stimulus check to pay off more than $3,000 in costs related to his criminal record so he could reinstate his driver’s license and return to work.
“I should have known there would be some kind of catch,” Rivers said.
Florida’s history of felon disenfranchisement dates back to 1838, when the state’s first constitution prohibited people convicted of bribery or assorted “high crimes and misdemeanors” from voting. After the Civil War, when the possibility of former enslaved Black men being able to vote was real, the state expanded its law so that anyone convicted in a felony loss the franchise. However, Amendment 4 was approved by 64% of Florida voters in 2018. This amendment allows people convicted of felonies to vote, except for murder and sexual offense convictions.
The state legislature passed its law in the next year, complicating the process of embracing new voters. It required that anyone convicted of felonies must decide if they are eligible to vote. The Florida Department of Corrections, along with county detention centers, must provide notice to inmates when they are released from any outstanding financial obligations.
It is not clear if all facilities have this capability.
Florida charges those convicted for crimes with a variety of fines and fees. Some of these fees are not able to be reduced or eliminated. Defendants with felony charges are subject to a $100 charge for using a public defender and a $100 prosecution fee. In addition to the financial obligations he owed, at least one of the Alachua County defendants has been charged with additional voting fraud charges.
It is difficult and costly to determine what someone owes you. An analysisTraci Burch (a Northwestern University professor of political science) attempted to determine legal financial obligations for 153 Florida residents who had been convicted of felonies. She found only three consistent records. Counties often have poor records, cumbersome websites, and unhelpful clerks.
What’s more, it can cost money merely to find out how much money you owe. Four in 10 Florida counties charged either a payment or processing fee to look at their databases, and 15% charged a fee to access certain records, according to Burch’s research.
Smith, the Florida politician scientist, will retire in 2020 estimatedAmendment 4 would make it possible for just over 1,000,000 people vote. Of that number, about 77% had outstanding legal financial obligations, rendering them ineligible to vote under Florida’s new law until they paid their debts. Four out of five Floridians with felony convictions owed at least $500 in fines and fees, Smith’s analysis found. More than 59% owed over $1,000.
Smith estimates that the state legislature disqualified approximately 750,000 people from voting after it passed its law requiring felonies-convicted people to pay their debts before they could vote. And the new law’s impact was felt much more harshly by Black people, who faced greater fines and fees: 26% of white Floridians with a felony conviction would be eligible to get their voting rights restored under the new requirement, but only 18% of Black people, according to Smith.
In May 2020, a judge of a district court ruled that portions of the law were invalid and that the law had been established. pay-to-vote system. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ruling the following September, saying it was in the state’s power to require the payoffs and the law didn’t violate people’s rights. The state Supreme Court also has issued an advisory opinionThis was deemed to be lawful.
It’s not surprising that the number of people with felony convictions who registered to vote has fallen far short what supporters had hoped. These people registered to vote in Florida before the 2020 election, more than 85,000
Supporters of the law say that it’s only fair to have people fulfill their full sentences, including paying any crime-related debts. Kramer, the Alachua prosecutor, is one of the state attorneys who has also been implicated. developed processesWithin their jurisdictions, people with felony convictions may verify their eligibility to vote or request to reduce their fines and fees.
Felons who are not registered to vote can appeal to the state for certain fees to be reduced or eliminated. This is according to Republican State Senator Jeff Brandes, who sponsored the law requiring payment before restoration of voting rights.
“We truly believe there are people who are indigent that will just simply never be able to pay,” he said. “The court only collects a fraction of what is given out anyways. And so there should be a way for the state to grant some grace or for the court to grant some grace and provide people flexibility.”
Kelvin Bolton has been waiting in Alachua Council Jail for his case to be heard since April.
He’s been in and out of the system since he was 16, piling up a long record of mostly nonviolent crimes, most recently for stealing a car, groping a woman in a store and taking cigarettes from a Dollar General.
He is determined to keep the vow he made to himself and his family to stay straight this time. He expressed frustration that the prosecutor created a program to allow people convicted of felonies who are not facing charges to check their eligibility for voting while he and others are still facing criminal charges.
“Why would they want to keep charging us for something that they’re in the wrong for?” he said. “The state is in the wrong for what they did to us.”
