Our mayoral election is in just under a month. And it's very obvious that the candidates feel that the restoration of voting rights could play a big role. They can't stop talking about what they're going to do for East Tampa (the black side of town).

I don't expect Florida to swing blue but on the local & state level, I'm curious what the effects will be.

Any other areas experiencing this?

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https://www.tampabay.com/florida-politics/buzz/2019/02/07/amendment-4-is-already-changing-tampas-electorate-heres-how/

In a state where elections have brought recounts that last weeks and where 29 electoral votes can depend on a decimal point, much attention has been paid to how Florida’s overall electorate could change after November.

That’s when voters approved Amendment 4, a ballot measure that restored the right to vote to most people who had served out sentences for felony convictions. What would 1.2 million potential new voters mean to perhaps the purplest big state?

But an earlier test for Amendment 4 comes on March 5 in Tampa. It’s the election for the mayor and city council.

Monday marked the deadline to register to vote in the city’s election. That gave ex-felons in Tampa just 27 days to register if they intended to vote.

Newly-released data on registrations in January show us what Amendment 4 meant, at least so far: crowds of people registered to vote, and those crowds are older, blacker and more Democratic.

When the law took effect, supervisors of elections’ offices were as busy as they get before statewide general elections, despite it being January in an off-year. In Tampa, 426 people registered to vote that week, about 2.5 times as many as the weekly average in the months before.

At the beginning of 2019, 22 percent of Tampa voters were black. But on Jan. 8, the first day of Amendment 4, the black share of those registering to vote skyrocketed to 47 percent. For the entire week, black people made up 35 percent of new registrations.

When the Times analyzed records of Floridians taken off the voter rolls after a felony conviction, they found that black people were five times as likely to lose their voting rights as white people. Black men were much more likely to register to vote after Amendment 4 than black women.

At the beginning of the year, registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans in the city, 46 percent to 26 percent. Among those who registered during the first week Amendment 4 was in effect, the difference was even starker: 55 percent to 15 percent.

It’s also an older group of voters. Tampa’s newly-enfranchised are not teenagers registering as they get their drivers’ licenses. The average age of new registrants in Amendment 4′s first week was 46, almost eight years older than those who registered in the weeks following Election Day. Only 18 percent of new registrants after Amendment 4 were younger than 30, half as many as in the weeks before the law.

In Tampa, the effect of the law varies depending on where you go. The hotspot is, without a doubt, District 5, the East Tampa ward represented by City Council Chairman Frank Reddick,

Reddick said areas with high crime rates mean the region has an outsize number of people who are suddenly eligible to vote. The week Amendment 4 took effect, 38 percent of new registrations took place in District 5, nearly twice as many as in each of the other three districts that aren’t citywide.

Reddick said organizers worked hard to inform his constituents about the amendment and encouraged them to register to vote.

“They feel elevated now," he said. “They feel excited.”

Still, it concerned him that state agencies and lawmakers are scrutinizing key aspects of the law, which could produce changes after the Tampa election.

“I’m very, very worried about it. Because you have no knowledge, no advance knowledge of which way the Legislature might decide.”

He believes once the amendment is clear and prospective voters are more comfortable, “the numbers will go up.”

The numbers don’t include voters who registered in the first few days of February, meaning the full picture is unclear. Early voting begins Feb. 25.

i dont know what percentage of ex-felons are actually registering but i guess the numbers are higher than "regular" population.

i dont know how much the needle will be moved and what challenges republicans will throw at them.

i was reading about some changes new mexico was making the other day. i think they were going to make it so that people had to opt out of registering when getting a license or ID. so everyone would basically be registered to vote. i think they also want to let felons vote even while they serve their term. im sure not everyone agrees with that.

hopefully more states keep pushing in this direction.

https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2019/03/19/felon-vote-sparks-battle-for-florida-as-gop-moves-to-define-rights-921875

TALLAHASSEE — Florida's Republican-controlled Legislature is moving to roll back parts of a historic November constitutional amendment that reinstated voting rights for convicted felons, drawing sharp opposition from Democrats in a key 2020 presidential battleground.

A bill that would limit voting rights that ex-offenders gained under the ballot measure cleared its first stop in a Republican-controlled Florida House committee on a party-line vote Tuesday, and the president of the state Senate said he expects his chamber to draw up a companion measure.

Democrats and others condemned the move, likening the legislation to a poll tax imposed on African-Americans during the Jim Crow era.

“Today we saw the politicization of Amendment 4,” said Neil Volz, political director with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, which pushed the voting rights initiative onto last year’s ballot. “When partisan politics gets involved, the people lose.”

At stake are the voting rights of more than a million Floridians — and possibly the U.S. presidency. The legislative battle is a reminder of the high political stakes in Florida, where voters backed both Barack Obama and Donald Trump in recent presidential elections. The marquee races in last year’s elections, U.S. Senate and governor, were so tight that both were forced into recounts.

In the Statehouse, top Republicans, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, say the amendment that voters approved was ambiguous and that it’s appropriate to spell out how the measure is supposed to be carried out.

“We’re here today because we have a tough problem to solve,” said state Rep. James Grant, a Tampa Republican and one of the main architects of the legislation.

Florida’s constitution previously stripped voting rights from convicted felons. Florida’s governor and elected members of the Cabinet have the power to restore rights, including voting rights, to former prisoners, but the process and rules have changed based on who is in charge.

More than 100,000 felons were granted voting rights while former Gov. Charlie Crist was in office. But after former Gov. Rick Scott and state officials changed the rules in 2011, the number fell dramatically. As of last year, fewer than 3,000 people had their voting rights restored during Scott’s two terms.

In November, more than 64 percent of the state’s voters approved Amendment 4, which guaranteed restoration for nearly all felons upon “completion of all terms of sentence including parole or probation.” People convicted of murder or felony sexual offenses are ineligible.

In January, local election supervisors began accepting voter registration forms from state residents previously considered ineligible to vote. But they’ve left it to the Department of State to determine whether or not a registrant was newly eligible under the amendment.

The agency will “soon begin forwarding any credible and reliable matches” of people who the state believes are still ineligible to vote, department spokeswoman Sarah Revell said. Under the law, only local officials can remove a voter from the rolls.

The House bill that advanced Tuesday defines what crimes would disqualify someone from being allowed to vote. It also requires ex-prisoners to pay any court costs, fines or fees before their sentence can be considered “complete” and their rights are restored.

Democrats likened the requirement to a poll tax that forced residents to pay to register to vote. Amendment 4 backers say the Republican interpretation goes beyond what voters approved.

“If this bill passes, it will undoubtedly continue to disenfranchise those who have already served their time and paid their debt to society,” said Kirk Bailey, political director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

“This is exactly what we were worried about from the beginning — legislative attempts to undermine the will of the people who voted for second chances and to rid Florida of the last vestiges of its Jim Crow-era past,” Bailey said.

Grant pushed back against critics, noting that attorneys representing Amendment 4 supporters told state Supreme Court justices in 2017 that court costs and fines were considered part of someone’s sentence.

The Republican legislator further defended the bill by pointing out that it includes a requirement that felons leaving prison be told what to do in order to be eligible to vote. He said it would be wrong for lawmakers to “stay silent” and leave implementation of the amendment to unelected agency heads.

Despite fierce opposition from Democrats, the measure is expected to move easily through the GOP-dominated House. Senate President Bill Galvano, who initially agreed the amendment could be implemented without the Legislature acting, said his chamber was preparing a bill to give “guidance” on how it should work.

DeSantis said Tuesday that he had not seen the wording of the House measure but supports having the Legislature spell out how the amendment should be implemented.

“Do you want the executive branch to just unilaterally, by fiat, make these decisions,” DeSantis said, “or do you want it to be in a public debate?”

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I would think it would get thrown out in court but then again, you never know. Our state Supreme Court just to a heavy lean to the right. And if it did make its way through the judicial system, that could take years.

The GOP is up to its same old sleazy tricks.