More on voting rights restoration in Florida: Hand v. Scott is a lawsuit filed by the Fair Elections Legal Network to automatically restore former felons’ voting rights and eliminate Florida’s arbitrary process for re-enfranchisement. The plaintiffs include seven former felons who have applied for restoration of voting rights and have been denied for minor infractions, like traffic violations, or for no provided reason at all.
The background: 1.68 million Floridians are currently disenfranchised—the highest state total in the nation—and over 10,000 are waiting for a hearing on their restoration applications. The Clemency Board only hears an average of 52 cases per quarter. At this rate, if no new applications were submitted, it would take the Clemency Board almost 51 years to hear the entire backlog of applicants.
The current voting rights restoration process requires former felons who have completed their full sentences to petition the Executive Clemency Board, which is comprised of the Governor, Attorney General, Chief Financial Officer and Commissioner of Agriculture. Once they have applied, they must wait an indeterminate amount of time to be placed on the Board’s quarterly meeting agenda. This can take as long as 10 years for some applicants or months for others.
Once an applicant is selected for a hearing, the Executive Clemency Board’s decision to accept or deny the restoration of voting rights is made through an arbitrary process, not regulated with any laws, rules or criteria. Some applicants, including some of the plaintiffs in this case, have had their applications rejected simply for receiving traffic citations after they finished their sentences.
The lawsuit cites the lack of any rules or time limits governing the Executive Clemency Board’s decisions to grant or deny applications. Without any rules, the system and the applicants are prone to arbitrary treatment, violating the 1st and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Giving government officials unfettered discretion, according to the complaint, leads to unequal treatment of people in similar circumstances.