Only months after being convicted of 34 felonies in the state of New York, former President Donald Trump exercised his right to vote at a Palm Beach polling location on Aug. 14.
Florida voters overwhelmingly supported a 2018 constitutional amendment restoring the voting rights of people with felony convictions after they’ve finished their sentences, except for those convicted of murder or a felony sex crime. But in the years since, Florida Republicans have worked to place obstacles in the way.
So when the most prominent Republican in the state cast his ballot in Florida’s primary elections, felony conviction and all, some voting rights advocates celebrated.
Trump is “an example of some of the challenges that exist, but also the opportunities that exist to create a better system – a process that works better for everybody,” said Neil Volz, deputy director of Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, a group promoting voting rights for formerly incarcerated people. Volz said that in recent months, he’s noticed an uptick in speaking requests from conservative groups who have a new interest in how the criminal-legal system interacts with voting rights.
“Every move that he makes is being looked at,” Volz said of Trump. “And that’s an educational opportunity for us.”
Eva Marie Uzcategui via Getty Images
Just months after nearly 65% of Floridians voted in 2018 to re-enfranchise people with past felony convictions, Florida Republicans made it harder for that same group to vote. In June 2019, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 7066 into law, requiring people with past felony convictions to not just finish their prison sentences, probation and parole before regaining their rights — but also to pay financial obligations like court fines, fees, costs or restitution. Some voting rights groups have called the law a “poverty penalty” and akin to a poll tax.
Florida lacks a reliable system to actually track who owes these sorts of penalties, meaning that even county officials sometimes don’t have a clear answer on whether people with past felony convictions are eligible to vote.
“The legal-financial obligations are really complicated to understand, and we’ve even seen instances where [county databases] don’t go far enough back in time to be useful for people with older convictions, and we’ve seen them show on the county database that they don’t owe any financial obligations, and then the clerk will pull something out of nowhere that shows that they do,” said Blaire Bowie, director of the Campaign Legal Center’s “Restore Your Vote” program. “So it’s still a huge problem.”
There’s also the issue of voter intimidation: In 2022, DeSantis held a high-profile press conference in a Broward County courtroom to announce illegal voting charges against 20 Floridians with prior convictions for murder or felony sex offenses. DeSantis did not present any evidence that any of them had actually intended to vote illegally, and some defendants later said they’d been told by authority figures, including election officials, a probation officer and even a sheriff’s deputy that they were eligible to vote. But due to the arrests, many eligible voters with past felony convictions felt discouraged from registering to vote.
There are programs and legal resources, including at FRRC, to help people with past convictions determine, one way or the other, whether they have any outstanding fines or fees to pay before they can register to vote again.
Florida’s Division of Elections can also provide advisory opinions for individuals who are unsure about their eligibility. (You can read redacted examples of advisory letters to potential voters here.) And soon, the process will get easier, as the state just proposed a handy form Floridians will be able to fill out to streamline the process and provide a clear answer on voter eligibility within 90 days.
Trump’s circumstances differ from those of many other Floridians with felony convictions.
For one thing, he’s got friends in high places: After Trump’s conviction for falsifying business records related to a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, DeSantis said that given the “absurd nature” of the prosecution against Trump, the governor would be willing to restore his right to vote via the Florida Clemency Board if there were any issue. The board is an alternate route to restoring voting rights.
Also, Trump was convicted in New York, not Florida.
Though Florida law doesn’t explicitly mention state-by-state differences depending on where a conviction takes place, the Florida Division of Elections has made clear that, according to its interpretation, “A felony conviction in another state makes a person ineligible to vote in Florida only if the conviction would make the person ineligible to vote in the state where the person was convicted.”
And according to New York law, Trump’s voting rights would only be affected if he is actively in prison for a felony. Trump’s sentencing hearing for his New York conviction is set for Sept. 18, though that may change.
There’s one more interesting question in Trump’s case: When, exactly, in someone’s criminal justice journey does the Florida law actually take effect?
“Florida law is unclear on when a felon loses the right to vote,” Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg told HuffPost in a statement, noting two dueling legal opinions. One, from the state attorney general in 1977, says a conviction that’s being appealed does not become final, for purposes of voting rights, “until the judgment of the lower court has been finally affirmed by the appellate courts.” (Trump has moved to appeal his conviction.) The other opinion cited by Aronberg came from the Division of Elections in 1995: “A conviction of a felony at a trial court immediately suspends the civil rights of the defendant with respect to registering to vote and voting.”
In any event, according to Aronberg, the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections hasn’t received any notice from the state regarding Trump’s eligibility due to an out-of-state conviction; the supervisor, Wendy Sartory Link, actually welcomed Trump when he showed up to vote early on Aug. 14.