I woke up early on Jan. 8, the very first day that I was eligible to vote again in Florida. I arrived at the Lee County elections office before the doors even opened. The staff helped me fill out the paperwork, my hands shaking. My mom, who’d encouraged me to take this step, came along. When I was officially registered, she hugged me. We both cried. I hadn’t cast a ballot since 2008. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how much my vote meant to me. I was 30 years old.
For years, the opportunity felt totally out of reach. My 2010 felony conviction for drug possession took over so many other aspects of my life, like where I could find a job or rent an apartment — voting was yet another one. Florida had some of the harshest laws in the country, disenfranchising ex-offenders for life unless they sought clemency. The clemency process takes years, and the
governor said no far more often than he said yes. I shoved the possibility out of my mind.
That all changed in November, when an overwhelming majority of voters
passed a ballot measure automatically restoring voting rights to former offenders. Amendment 4 gave nearly 1.5 million people our voices back. After that change to the state constitution, the
rate of new registrations more than doubled. Then, this past spring, Republican lawmakers
put a huge obstacle in our path. The law they passed will require that people with felony convictions pay all court fees, fines and restitution before they’re deemed eligible to vote. When it takes effect on Monday, I will be erased from the voter rolls. That’s because, according to the county clerk’s office, I have an outstanding balance of $880 from 10 years ago.
As the judge ordered, I spent one year in jail and completed four years of probation. On top of that, I owed thousands of dollars in fines and fees, including prosecution and investigative costs, and the cost of my own probation supervision. Florida is one of many states
that make defendants and offenders pay for steps of the criminal justice system that used to be free, from using a public defender to wearing a court-ordered electronic monitoring device. This burden usually falls on the poor.
Over the years, I’ve struggled to pay down this debt. The court said I could work some of it off through community service, paid at $10 an hour. I chipped away at the balance for hundreds of hours, serving dinner at the Salvation Army and doing office work for a mental health and addiction clinic. Since my driver’s license was suspended, I took the bus and walked everywhere. I borrowed what I could from friends and family, who could barely afford it themselves and needed to be repaid in turn.
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