According to Florida Democrats like Andrew Gillum, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Republican state legislators are trying to dismantle the voter-supported voter rights restoration measure, Amendment 4.
In 2018, 64% of Floridians voting in favor of restoring voting rights to U.S. citizens convicted felons who finish out their sentences, including serving parole and probation.
DeSantis is on record of saying that he would be “very tough on crime” and would “never going to budge.”
Gillum, who is trying to stay politically relevant after losing to DeSantis in the 2018 midterm elections, has launched his Florida Forward non-profit targeting President Donald Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis and all Republicans as racists.
According to his latest Florida Firewall fundraising letter, the Forward Florida group says that the Republican-led bill DeSantis signed into law earlier this year that mandates felons to pay their financial obligations before they can vote, is nothing more than a “Jim Crow-era poll tax.”
Here is the text of the fundraising letter:
“Donald Trump and his allies know they need to win Florida to win the election, and that's why they're going to do everything they can to stack the deck in their favor - including employing tactics to suppress the vote.
FIRST: Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a Republican-backed law that created a Jim Crow-era poll tax that experts say could disenfranchise 4 out of 5 ex-offenders, even though 64% of Florida voters passed Amendment 4.
NEXT: We launched our Democracy Protection Fund to fight back against these voter suppression tactics, so we can overcome this threat to our mission to register and reengage a million new voters to flip Florida blue and defeat Trump.”
