How Trump Just Voted With A Felony Conviction In Florida

LOADING ERROR LOADING Only months after being convicted of 34 felonies in the state of New York, former President Donald Trump exercised his right to vote at a Palm Beach, Florida, polling location on Aug. 14. Florida voters overwhelmingly supported a 2018 constitutional amendment restoring the voting rights of people with felony convictions after they’ve finished their sentences, except for those convicted of murder or a felony sex crime. Advertisement So when the most prominent Republican in the state cast his ballot in Florida’s primary elections, felony conviction and all, some voting rights advocates celebrated. Trump is “an example of some of the challenges that exist, but also the opportunities that exist to create a better system – a process that works better for everybody,” said Neil Volz, deputy director of Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, a group promoting voting rights for formerly incarcerated people. Volz said that in recent months, he’s noticed an uptick in speaking requests from conservative groups who have a new interest in how the criminal-legal system interacts with voting rights. “And that’s an educational opportunity for us.” Former U.S. President Donald Trump leaves after casting his ballot at the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections on Aug. 14, 2024, as part of early voting for the state’s upcoming down-ballot primary. Eva Marie Uzcategui via Getty Images Advertisement Just months after nearly 65% of Floridians voted in 2018 to re-enfranchise people with past felony convictions, Florida Republicans made it harder for that same group to vote. Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 7066 into law, requiring people with past felony convictions to not just finish their prison sentences, probation and parole before regaining their rights — but also to pay financial obligations like court fines, fees, costs or restitution. Florida lacks a reliable system to actually track who owes these sorts of penalties, meaning that even county officials sometimes don’t have a clear answer on whether people with past felony convictions are eligible to vote. “The legal-financial obligations are really complicated to understand, and we’ve even seen instances where [county databases] don’t go far enough back in time to be useful for people with older convictions, and we’ve seen them show on the county database that they don’t owe any financial obligations, and then the clerk will pull something out of nowhere that shows that they do,” said Blair Bowie, director of the Campaign Legal Center’s “Restore Your Vote” program. “So it’s still a huge problem.” There’s also the issue of voter intimidation: In 2022, DeSantis held a high-profile press conference in a Broward County courtroom to announce illegal voting charges against 20 Floridians with prior convictions for murder or felony sex offenses. DeSantis did not present any evidence that any of them had actually intended to vote illegally, and some defendants later said they’d been told by authority figures, including election officials, a probation officer and even a sheriff’s deputy that they were eligible to vote. For one thing, he’s got friends in high places: After Trump’s conviction for falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, DeSantis said that given the “absurd nature” of the prosecution against Trump, the governor would be willing to restore his right to vote via the Florida Clemency Board if there were any issue. Though Florida law doesn’t explicitly mention state-by-state differences depending on where a conviction takes place, the Florida Division of Elections has made clear that, according to its interpretation, “A felony conviction in another state makes a person ineligible to vote in Florida only if the conviction would make the person ineligible to vote in the state where the person was convicted.” And according to New York law, Trump’s voting rights would only be affected if he is actively in prison for a felony. Advertisement “Florida law is unclear on when a felon loses the right to vote,” Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg told HuffPost in a statement, noting two dueling legal opinions. One, from the state attorney general in 1977, says a conviction that’s being appealed does not become final, for purposes of voting rights, “until the judgment of the lower court has been finally affirmed by the appellate courts.” (Trump has moved to appeal his conviction.) – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-florida-voting-rights-felony-conviction_n_66c39fe5e4b0972f8ace1a6d