I just met with Desmond Meade.
Got my voting rights restored.
No fines or fees.
Restitution paid.
From my understanding, he has completed all his sentence.
Any financial obligations he had he's taken care of that.
Michael Vick had his voting rights restored in September of 2020.
Now, he is working with LeBron James's voting initiative to restore
voting rights to former felons.
You know what that initiative was about is, you know, paying off fines
to some people who might have significant fines who keep them from
voting. Millions of United States citizens are being forced to pay
for their right to vote.
As of 2020, nearly 5.2 million Americans with felony convictions are
banned from voting.
Today, 48 states have some form of barrier to felon voter
participation, with at least 30 states having laws that require
former felons to pay before they can vote.
In Arizona, for example, first-time offenders can have their voting
rights restored after completing probation and paying off any fines
or restitution. Repeat offenders must have their rights restored by a
judge or through a petition to the court.
But in Tennessee, former felons must pay all fines and fees and be up
to date on child support payments before requesting restoration.
Only two states, Maine and Vermont, and most recently, Washington,
D.C., do not strip felons of their voting rights and even allow them
to vote while serving their sentence.
And what makes Maine and Vermont so different?
They are majority White states, you know, in the +90% White.
And so, there is no fear of that population of people voting while
they're incarcerated. Today, there are still 11 states that
permanently disenfranchise some people with felony convictions,
including Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee.
But when you go to Florida, when you go to Alabama, when you go to a
host of other states with significant populations of people of color,
you see harsh felony disenfranchisement laws.
And most recent, Florida, Kentucky, Iowa, Alabama have sort of stood
out for having the harshest felony disenfranchisement laws.
Felony disenfranchisement has a deep-rooted, political history in the
U.S.. Following the Civil War, the 14th and 15th Amendments, ratified
in 1868 and 1870, were meant to secure voting rights for Black men.
But shortly after the amendments were passed, new criminal laws were
enacted that put Black communities at heightened risk of arrest.
These arrests could lead to Black citizens losing their voting
rights. They did this by specifically carving out laws that were
meant to punish people.
Laws that didn't necessarily say I'm punishing you because you're
Black, but laws that punished you because you were poor.
Therefore, you would see instances where you could lose your rights
for stealing a chicken, but you won't lose the right to vote for
killing your wife. These harsh, criminal convictions continued to be
used as a barrier to keep Black Americans from voting throughout the
Jim Crow era, only to be intensified by Richard Nixon's war on drugs
in the '70s. America's public enemy number one in the United States
is drug abuse.
Consequently, felony disenfranchisement rates skyrocketed from roughly
1.2 million in 1976 to 6.1 million in 2016.
In the U.S., someone is arrested for drug possession every 25
seconds, and nearly 80% of people in federal prison for drug offenses
are Black or Hispanic.
And today, in states like Florida, there are still laws that hand
down felony convictions for seemingly harmless acts.
Here in Florida, you can get a felony for driving with a suspended
license or catching a lobster tail is too short.
And the one that really shocked me the most was when a gentleman,
rather than giving his significant other a dozen roses on Valentine's
Day, chose to release 12 red balloons in the air, and he was arrested
by a deputy that seen him do so.
It's a third-degree felony in the state of Florida.
And if he was convicted, he would never be able to vote again unless
the governor somehow another shows him mercy.
With 29 electoral votes on the line, Florida has been a key
battleground in almost every U.S.
election. As of 2020, more than one in seven Black residents in
Florida are disenfranchised due to felony charges.
That felony disenfranchisement rule was on the books in Florida for
150 years. 150 years that someone could have said, "We know that's
wrong, let's change it."
But they chose not to do it, and so we took it upon ourselves to do it
for them. After incorporating the Florida Rights Restoration
Coalition in 2011, Meade spearheaded a grassroots movement to pass
Amendment 4, a law granting former felons the right to vote in
Florida with the exclusion of those convicted of rape or murder.
In November of 2018, Meade's team declared a historic victory after
65% of Floridians voted in favor of Amendment 4, granting at least
1.4 million former felons the right to vote.
Civil rights advocates praised Amendment 4 as the most important
piece of voting rights legislation since the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
I want to briefly lift up Florida, because I think it is a source of
hope in many ways in people's truly fundamental belief in the
political process and the democratic process and what has recently
happened there, but it's also another cautionary tale.
And in some ways, what a shame.
While Meade's team was celebrating the passing of Amendment 4,
Florida's Republican-run legislature put the progressive win on
pause. Florida representative James Grant sponsored Senate Bill 7066
in response to the passing of Amendment 4.
The bill stated that former felons must pay all fines associated with
their case before their voting rights can be fully restored.
After reaching Florida's Supreme Court, the bill was signed into law
by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in June of 2019.
In May 2020, the law was found unconstitutional by the United States
District Court in Tallahassee.
But the 11th Circuit U.S.
Court of Appeals overturned the lower court's ruling, and the fee
requirements were upheld.
According to The New York Times, five of the six judges who upheld
the additional requirements were appointed by President Trump.
The fact that Florida is stopping hundreds of thousands of people from
voting before the 2020 consequential presidential election, there's a
reason for that.
And we know how close the election was in 2000, and we know how close
elections have been since that time.
Experts say the bill effectively instituted a poll tax on former
felons in the state.
It's estimated that 774,000 of the 1.4 million former felons who had
their voting rights restored are obligated to pay large sums of money
before they can legally cast the ballot.
For an idea of the size of these fees, Florida courts amassed over
$250 million in criminal fines in 2018 alone.
Nationally, formerly incarcerated citizens have a 27% unemployment
rate, making it that much harder to pay off their debt.
According to the Brennan Center for Justice, former felons who
registered to vote in Florida following Amendment 4 hour earned
$15,000 less than the average voter in the state.
As the majority of formerly incarcerated Floridians struggle to regain
financial footing, at least one Florida resident was able to cover
his own fees and help pave the way for other disenfranchise voters to
do the same. Former NFL quarterback Michael Vick grew up in Newport
News, Virginia, a small city with a poverty rate roughly 5% above the
national average.
Growing up, Vick says he and his peers didn't believe their vote
counted. We kind of left it at that, man.
It's like, you know, it is what it is, and nobody educated us on it.
Mom and Dad didn't talk to us about it.
And, you know, we was seriously underprivileged, and we just looked
at it as, you know, "We growing up in poverty.
The world is going to exist the way it does.
It's not going to include us anyway.
And, you know, it is what it is."
After completing his 23 month prison sentence in 2009 for dogfighting
charges, Vick was sure he'd never have an opportunity to vote again.
It was never anyone around me pushing, talking about my voting rights
other than my wife, and she was extremely concerned and always asked,
"When can you get your voting rights back?
And when will be able to get the felony expunged off your record?"
And and I'm looking at her like,"Never, you know?
It's never going to happen." Today, Vick is leveraging his fame and
experience to help other formerly incarcerated Floridians regain
their right to vote. And that's precisely why LeBron James tapped
Vick's shoulder for his voting rights initiative, More Than A Vote,
part of which is geared towards paying off the fees of formerly
incarcerated people in Florida.
Vick also worked closely with Desmond Meade to have his own rights
restored. According to the Los Angeles Times, it's estimated that
Vick faced up to $350,000,000 in fines plus restitution.
So the process for me was obviously linking up with Desmond, you know,
figuring out if I had any fines that needed to be paid.
Owe any court costs or fines in your case?
No court costs.
No fines or fees.
I checked out in that box and then just going through the initial
process of filling out the paperwork, going to the voter
registration, dropping the paperwork off, which is really cool.
As of July 2020, James's voting rights initiative donated $100,000 to
Meade's organization.
Fellow basketball star Michael Jordan also contributed $500,000 to
the organization. And former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg
made a $16,000,000 contribution in September, which reinstated at
least 31,000 people's voting rights.
While the state of Florida is fighting us tooth and nail, right, to
hold democracy hostage.
We have people like LeBron and Michael, and so many others, thousands
of people throughout the country have risen up and become like
defenders of democracy or patriots or guardians of democracy.
And they have said, "You know what?
No one should be denied the opportunity to vote simply because they
are too poor to pay." Recently, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, asked
the state's attorney general to call an investigation into Bloomberg's
donation. At the same time, legal advocates continue to fight against
Senate Bill 7066, stating it violates the 24th Amendment, which
banned the use of poll taxes.
And we're frankly seeing a retrogression back to some of the practices
of my grandparents and great grandparents, but Jim Crow was created
and erected. It can be destroyed.
And I feel the same way about voter suppression.
If people can erect that system, we can definitely tear it down, but
it requires vigilance.
It requires work.
Researchers and advocates are paying close attention to turnout among
re-enfranchised voters.
A 2015 report from Harvard University's Journal of Political Science
studied Iowa's brief re-enfranchisement effort in 2005, which
automatically restored voting rights to former felons who completed
their sentences. The study found that only 15% re-enfranchise voters
in Iowa participated in the 2008 presidential election, highlighting
the need for greater education around voting rights.
That's the thing, a lot of people don't know what it takes to get your
voting rights back. And they think that the hurdles are so hard to
overcome that they don't lend any time, effort, or thought to what
it takes to vote, and I can attest that.
I was one of those guys. I didn't put more time or effort into.
I kind of left it where it was, and that's why I want to be an
instrument of change in that regard.
And education is a core piece of Meade's platform, as his organization
works to engage newly enfranchised voters in both federal and local
elections. It's very easy when you talk about re-enfranchising 1.4
million to just solely focused on, "Wow, that will definitely impact
presidential elections." Our local elections are even more important.
You definitely could have a tremendous impact on who is actually
governing our communities, who are deciding the type of education
that our children should have and the type of health care that we
should have, and to actually challenge people to reimagine what
public safety really looks like.
Through efforts of leaders like Meade, James, and Vick thousands of
re-enfranchised felons will feel the power of voting for the first
time in 2020.
And for some, it's worth the cost.
You know, I recorded the whole process because I just wanted to look
back on these moments and show my kids how much it meant to me and
that in trying times I'm trying to be a leader.
So, you know, I'm not going to ever, you know, regret what I've done
in life and what led to me being in that disposition.
I'm only going to go look at the position I'm in as a positive and
how I made the most out of.