Black athletes and entertainers are standing up in a major way to make sure the voices of Black people matter in this year’s elections.
More Than A Vote, a group founded by LeBron James and others in June to fight against voter suppression, says it will donate $100,000 to help pay the outstanding debts of people who have already served time for their felony convictions but are still unable to vote in Florida.
The money will go to the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, reports Politico. The organization helped secure the passage of an amendment in 2018 which restored voting rights to 1.4 million former felons in Florida who had been previously banned from voting for life under the state’s constitution.
Due to a measure passed by Republicans shortly after, around 775,000 people in the state with former felony convictions are still ineligible to vote because they owe court debts and fees.
“That’s why More Than A Vote is supporting the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition to help formerly incarcerated American citizens—too many of them Black and brown—pay off their outstanding fines and fees and register to vote in the 2020 election and beyond,” the group said on social media of their donation.
Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis has appealed a federal judge’s ruling in May that it is unconstitutional and essentially a poll tax for the state to require people pay fees before being able to vote—often without even informing them that they owe money in the first place.
According to Politico, the appeals hearing is slated to take place on the date of Florida’s primary in August—which underscores that the fight against the disenfranchisement of Black people at this critical time in America must be levied on all fronts and that all hands must be on deck.
Kudos to the athletes and artists behind More Than A Vote for putting their money to work for the betterment of their people.
DISCUSSION
This is a great step, and I’m glad they did - but they shouldn’t have needed to in the first place. The state of Florida even straight up admitted in court that they can’t identify who needs to pay, and how much they need to pay. Their entire point of passing this law wasn’t to collect money (the fact that Florida funds its courts through ridiculous fees is another issue, but I digress) - it was to deter people from voting.