Ever since the Florida Legislature required felons to pay court fees after completing their sentences, voting rights groups have requested that the state provide an accessible system for those “returning citizens” to determine their eligibility to vote.
Instead, an election bill this session of about 100 pages includes a provision to make voters responsible for determining if they can go to the polls. In other words, it’s not the state’s job, which makes it more difficult for felons and other voters who are unclear about their eligibility.
That said, in a Senate committee meeting Thursday, Secretary of State Cord Byrd said that he wants a central system to be in place for voters.
“I would love to see a statewide database,” Byrd said when responding to a question from Democrat Tracie Davis, of Duval County. “It is beyond my technical ability to explain how that works because you have many different entities, including the Department of Corrections, FDLE, the clerks of court, the Department of State, the supervisors of elections, where all of that would need to be housed and all of that data transferred.”
Byrd went on to say that “we don’t want to remove anybody from the rolls until we’re absolutely certain, so I can envision a day that the state of Florida takes a lead and has a one centralized way that we can do this, but until that day comes, we have to continue to do it the way that that we’re doing it and just try to continue to do that.”
It was the first time Byrd has made such a comment since being appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to lead the state’s election system a year ago.
The lack of a central voter database has been a major issue in Florida ever since the Legislature implemented the 2018 constitutional amendment allowing people who had completed their criminal sentences (with the exceptions of those convicted of murder and sexual offenses) to have their right to vote restored – but only after they paid all of their outstanding fines, fees and restitution owed, sharply reducing the eligible pool of potential new voters.
But skepticism about the DeSantis administration actually creating such a database remains strong among those who have followed the issue.
“They would never do it, because they don’t trust their data,” former St. Petersburg-based Republican state Sen. Jeff Brandes told the Phoenix in a text message. “Hence they give felons ID cards.”
Others remain optimistic.
“Such a database is something that we have been advocating for years,” said Neil Volz, deputy director with the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC), which led the campaign to get felons their voting rights in 2018. “It’s common sense. If Florida wants to be the gold standard of elections in this country, it is time for us to implement these practical and important changes.”
The dream for the FRRC in advocating for the passage of Amendment 4 back in 2018 was that it could allow up to 1.5 million Floridians to be newly eligible to vote. The reality after the implementation of the amendment by the Legislature presents a far different picture: According to a report by University of Florida political science professor Dan Smith in 2020, 77% of those individuals were not qualified to register or vote due to outstanding felony-related legal financial obligations.
The issue became magnified last August after more than a dozen Florida residents were arrested on charges of alleged voter fraud. Though none of those people had outstanding legal financial obligations and instead were charged with voting illegally because they had prior convictions for felony sexual offenses, some of those voters said that they had been informed that they could apply to register and if they were found to be eligible they would receive a voter registration card.
The proposed elections bill in the Legislature requires that a written statement be added to that voter registration card saying that the card is proof of registration but is not legal verification of eligibility to vote, a change that Democrats are concerned about.
“You have folks that have a voter registration card, they assume that they are able to vote, no one else has told them that they’re not, they go vote, and then all of a sudden, they’re being paraded in front of a camera by the governor in handcuffs,” Tampa Bay Democrat Rep. Michele Rayner-Goolsby said to Hillsborough County Republican Lawrence McClure earlier this week in a committee meeting. “What is the mechanism in your bill that would stop that from happening?”
McClure replied: “We want that language on that registration card so that voters clearly understand that just because you have this card does not mean that you are eligible to vote. You need to make sure that you’re within the framework of current law to make sure that you are eligible to vote.”
Byrd’s comments this week that he wants a centralized database to inform voters if they still owe fines or fees appears to be an evolution from his stance from January, when he told a House committee that he was aware of problems with individuals understanding if they were eligible to vote and acknowledged, “I think that’s where we can improve the process,” but declined to indicate any support for a central database.
The new elections bill slated to be approved within the next two weeks contains more than two dozen changes to the current voting system, but doesn’t address the issue of allowing voters who may or may not still owe outstanding fines, fees or restitution.
South Florida Democrat Felicia Robinson filed a bill ahead of the session (HB 1235) that calls for the Florida Commission on Offender Review to create such a database to be accessible via the Internet by July of 2026. It was assigned to four separate committees, but wasn’t heard in any of them.
This article originally appeared in florida phoenix