It Was All a Lie: How the Republican Party Became Donald Trump

by Stuart Stevens

as I write this in the autumn of 2019, a coalition of civil rights groups is suing the State of Florida for passing legislation signed by the Republican governor that the suit claims is an attempt to institute a new poll tax. And they are right. The new legislation follows a 2018 amendment to the Florida Constitution that granted voting rights to the estimated 1.4 million Floridians with a prior felony conviction. The follow-up legislation requires those who had been convicted of a felony to pay all court fees and fines that are outstanding before they are allowed to vote. The intent of this is no different from that of the Alabama Constitution of 1901, charging voters $1.50 to vote. What percentages of those former felons are black? “In 2016, more than 418,000 black people out of a black voting-age population of more than 2.3 million, or 17.9 percent of potential black voters in Florida, had finished sentences but couldn’t vote due to a felony record, according to the Sentencing Project,” Vox wrote shortly after the 2018 amendment was passed granting voting rights to former felons.