18Nov/170
FAILURE TO GET THE RESTORATION OF VOTING RIGHTS AMENDMENT ON THE BALLOT IN FLORIDA, WOULD BE A FAILURE BY THE COMMUNITY MOST IMPACTED
By Michael Dobson
We may be witnessing a shame, a sham and a missed opportunity.
It would be a shame that Florida's African American community could never live down, if the restoration of voting rights amendment is not on the November 2018 ballot. The initiative has to meet a deadline of February 1, 2018 for turning in the requisite number of legitimate petitions for the Restoration of Voting Rights Constitutional Amendment in order for it to make the November 6, 2018 ballot in Florida. It’s not looking good, and that’s indeed a shame.
With more than 20 years experience in Florida politics, I am aware of the amount of money and organization required to obtain the petitions needed for a constitutional amendment that reaches Florida’s ballot, and the muscle needed for a win on election day. This petition effort and its lack of success has for a long time concerned this writer. Early on, I was concerned that the organization behind the initiative lacked the wherewithal to succeed. Also, from a distance, the petition gathering looked like a PR campaign for an individual, rather than a cause that we all should care about.
Upon checking with the Florida Division of Elections office on November 14, 2017 and having staff patiently answer my many questions about the Felon Voting Rights Ballot Initiative, the reality became clear. The trajectory was not moving toward success. For instance, with 2 ½ months away from a February 1, 2018 deadline, the certified petition count by the State Division of Election stands at 358,000, after nearly three years or more. By February 1, 2018, Florida's supervisors of elections must have had received 766, 222 certified/legitimate petitions, with certain proportionality standards met determinant upon a formula that uses county and congressional district demographics. Meaning, all petitions can’t come from simply the most populated counties. The Supervisor of Elections offices then have 30 days to submit their count of certified petitions to the Florida Division of Elections.
The issue of felon voting rights , no matter how you try to frame it, is seen by all as an issue specific to the African American Community, although it affects many other demographics. That fact alone signifies a nations wink and nod to its knowledge of the inherent institutional biases that exit in the criminal justice system. In my memory, this would be the first effort to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot for an issue that predominantly impacts African Americans. So, let me be clear, failure of the ballot initiative, would be a failure of and by Florida's African American community. That failure would be a bad mark for civil rights organizations and on the African American church community. Further, the failure would-be both symbolic and real. It would be a failure of Florida’s black community to coalesce around a cause that affects it disproportionately. It would also be a failure of the Caucasian community and its churches to help right a wrong that’s not disproportionately done to them, but to their brother instead.
Why has this been so difficult? Well, there are some hard and unsettling truths. First, this IS a partisan issue, and any attempt to suggest it is not is in the end disingenuous. It is also an unattractive issue, as there is a kneejerk recoil from the pious among us when you ask that they sign a petition to help anything with the word ”felon” in it. Moreover, there are problems rooted into some of the dynamics within the African American community itself, that has left the effort flat. These are dynamics that well meaning committed liberal leaning organizations that support issues of importance in the Black community, often fail to understand. Those in charge of the purse strings often do not understand that the credit for any success has to be as a collective, not individual based. When it is the latter, which it is in this case, unfortunately a high level of animus stifles the movement, making execution impossible. There are cultural truths about power sharing and collaboration in the African America community that, If not dealt with or understood, can leave any good cause in tatters. Moreover, resources has to be shared with a large number of organizations or individuals who are often left wanting when resources are made available to target the things they work on in the trenches daily, with no fan fare… or money.
As an illustration of what’s not always understood by funders, some years ago, certain African America members of the legislature had a dust up with the Florida Democratic Party (FDP) about their discontinuing the practice of giving the electives a budget which they controlled to hire people in their district for get out the vote (GOTV) efforts. They tried to explain to the FDP that without money to spread around, to get buy in from community leaders and hire folks easily, it could not produce high voter turn out. In this case, the funders of the felon voters rights amendment will have thrown its dollars down a rabbit whole if it does not understand that truth and others. For instance, It is a colossal mistake for them to appear to have cast their lot financially into only one organization (and connected ones), and not the whole community and a broad swath of organizations. Also, when funders decided that it would not fund other organizations seeking to help the host organization to accomplish its shared goal, they further doomed their fate.
So, then there is the sham. If televised or radio interviews tell you that there is 600,000-750,000 petitions, and the state of Florida only reports 358,000, trust the official figures and know that there is a lot of work to do. With that petition jujitsu, unfortunately , some key supporters have lost faith… coming to believe they cannot trust what the campaign is saying. These remaining few months are crucial for this important ballot initiative. It’s a test for the African American community and for the organizers. Now, does it have a chance of making the petition deadline with 2 ½ months remaining? Yes it can, but it will not if a correction in the approach is not made to change the current trajectory.
What I know is this, when the right to vote was essentially forever stripped of the 1.6 million Floridians who cannot vote today, there was no march on Tallahassee, there wasn’t any organizing from the streets or the pulpit. Each year African America legislators file bills to reverse the current policy so that the right to vote is restored automatically, and legislative leaders never placed those bills on the agenda to be heard. Those bills are DOA, each legislative session. And yet, there is not marching to the State capital or outrage in the streets about it. So, should we be surprised about where we found ourselves? Are we talking a good game, but not willing to back it up with work and action? Was William Shakespeare correct, that “the past is prologue”. If so, it’s hard to understand how the deadline can be met.
If there is a chance, someone will need to call a huddle that includes all interested participants, and not be shy about sharing monetary resources. If there ever was one, this is indeed an all hands on deck moment for the African American community. Failure would leave the African American community appearing quite impotent... then irrelevant. The effort of those working on it daily from the beginning deserves a lot of respect and credit. But now,we are in a different place. Turning around what is historically a racist policy, rooted in efforts by southern governors to squash black voting after reconstruction, is an opportunity to set the record straight about who we are as a state. It allows us to say that Florida believes in second chances. Then the African American community would have also channeled the hopes and spirit of Maya Angelou, to in the end say “Still I Rise”.
Michael Dobson is President of Dobson, Craig and Associates with over 20 years experience in Florida politics in Florida's Capital, Chairman of Florida Voters Campaign Founder of Florida Renewable Energy Producers Association(FREPA) and Director of The Dream Foundation,Inc (overseeing Florida's MLK license plate)