Remember your teen years? How many times did you almost derail your life? What if that poor decision had spiraled out of control? What if you were just along for the ride when things got out of hand? What if you had been caught?

What if your civic life ended before it began?

That is the reality for many Floridians. We prosecute more kids as adults than any other state. We label teenagers felons for life, stripping them of their right to vote before they ever gain it and stacking the odds against them ever being productive members of society.

“They must be dangerous. Adult crime, adult time, right?” No. The majority are charged with nonviolent offenses and pose no threat to public safety. Risk-taking and poor decisions are very normal parts adolescence – across time and cultures, criminal behavior peaks in adolescence and swiftly declines as we age. Because of this, the US Supreme Court has held that children must be treated differently.

So, there must be safeguards, right? No. While prosecutors can file indictments or ask a judge to waive children into adult court, that’s not how 98% of our youth get there – in nearly all cases, the prosecutor simply decides to charge the youth as an adult. No judge or court can weigh in or review this decision, and there is no standard for how prosecutors make these decisions.

We really send kids to jail and prison? Yes. The law requires they await trial in jail – they are often kept in isolation to protect them from adult inmates and receive minimal education. Solitary confinement, which is devastating to the mental health of full-grown adults, is also a reality of life in Florida prisons, no matter your age.

Prison is no place for a child to grow up. They face the highest risk of sexual abuse and commit suicide 36 times as often as those in juvenile facilities. Adolescence is a sensitive period for brain development, but the environment dictates how youth will learn to navigate conflicts, plan ahead and manage their emotions. Is prison really where we want kids to develop these skills?

In the 2019 Florida legislative session, we must reform the process by which we are giving up on these kids. Due process demands these decisions be reviewable. We must stop traumatizing them with cruel, inhumane treatment. We must start taking rehabilitation seriously and give these youth the tools we want them to have to function in society. A broad coalition of organizations, No Place for a Child, continues to push for these reforms.

However, the harm has already been done for thousands of our youth. Next month, we must pass Amendment 11 to ensure they benefit from future reforms, and we must pass Amendment 4 to restore the eligibility to vote to those who have already completed their sentences and are trying to be the best adults they can be.

Let’s resurrect commonsense and humanity – after all, this is the year of second chances.

“Taxation without representation!”

Just about everyone who studied our nation’s history will recall that rallying cry of American colonists against the British Crown that provoked the American Revolution. Those early Americans were forced to pay taxes to King George III but had no say at all in their own governance. The issue is a strand in our national DNA.

But taxing people while denying them a say on how their money is spent did not disappear completely into history. Today, in Florida, hundreds of thousands of citizens pay taxes – and have done so for years – but are denied the ability to vote in our local, state or national elections.

The reason is at a point in their past – sometimes decades ago – they were convicted of a felony. And despite having served their time in prison, completed probation, made court-ordered restitution and are now productive, taxpaying citizens, the state of Florida denies them the eligibility to vote.

According to Florida’s current clemency rules, a person completing all aspects of their sentence must still wait five to seven years before they can even apply to regain their eligibility to vote. They then join a waiting list, which as of Aug. 1 has 10,162 names on it. At the current slow rate of clemency hearings, it will take approximately 15 years for a person to have his or her case heard.

Amendment 4, on the ballot in November, would return the eligibility to vote to citizens completing all terms of their sentences, except for those convicted of homicide or sexual felonies. The amendment would supplant language currently in the Florida Constitution, which was written in 1868 and designed expressly to keep newly freed slaves from voting. Today it affects 1.4 million Floridians, most of whom are white.

Among those supporting Amendment 4 is Karen Leicht, 61, of Miami, who served 28 months in prison for conspiracy to commit insurance fraud.

“The only time in my life I’ve been arrested,” she says.

Leicht was released from prison in 2013 and has been working ever since, currently as a senior paralegal at a Miami law firm. Her tax returns document six-figure earnings. She finished probation in January 2016, and in most states, she would have been allowed to vote then.

“I’ve been making a decent salary, paying my taxes and not receiving a cent in government benefits, but I still can’t vote,” she says. “That to me is taxation without representation. More than that, everybody deserves a second chance – everybody.”

Leicht believes in second chances in more ways than one. In February, she donated a kidney to a cousin she had met only once in her life – Frank Gimbrone of Connecticut. In doing so, she gave him a second chance to live, Gimbrone says.

Keith Ivey, 45, of Jacksonville is another former prison inmate who has gone straight, pays taxes but still can’t vote.  Over 20 years ago, Ivey, then in his 20s, passed bad checks, used the IDs of other people for personal gain and violated Rico statutes. None of his crimes were violent. His last arrest was in 2003 and he spent eight and a half years in prison. He has been free for more than six years and been crime-free.

“They let me out for good behavior and I’ve been on good behavior ever since,” he says. He credits his family and church for their support.
Ivey says the guards in the halfway house where he finished his time believed that he was so rehabilitated they appointed him to raise the American flag every morning on the flagpole – outside the grounds of the facility.

Along with his father, he now runs Ivey League Used Cars in Jacksonville, a successful business.

“I pay monthly taxes, quarterly taxes, and yearly taxes, but I still can’t vote,” he says. “I would love to be a full member of society by being able to vote.”

Leicht and Ivey represent hundreds of thousands of Floridians who pay their taxes but cannot help determine who serves as their public officials and how their tax money is spent.

Taxation without representation was wrong 240 years go; it is still wrong today. Do the right thing. In November, vote “YES” on Amendment 4.
 
John Lantigua is an investigative journalist for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida.

A business organization founded by the ultra-conservative Koch Brothers recently announced its support for Florida’s Amendment 4. That measure – on the ballot in November -- will return the eligibility to vote to people with past felonies who have completed all terms of their sentences--including any probation, parole, and restitution. It excludes those convicted of homicide or felonies sexual in nature.

Mark Holden, chairman of Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce and senior vice president of Koch Industries, announced the endorsement in September. It surprised some political observers, but maybe it shouldn’t have. As part of a platform of libertarian and conservative causes, the Koch Brothers have worked toward reducing mass incarceration -- a plague that costs our country billions of dollars in corrections spending and in the lost productivity of those who are incarcerated. 

The Florida Parole Commission has said that people who have paid their debt to society and then proceed to vote are three times less likely to re-offend. So, Amendment 4 makes perfect sense for the Koch Brothers.

That announcement also punctures the idea that Amendment 4 is a purely partisan issue. While it is true that GOP gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis has spoken out against the measure, a recent University of North Florida poll revealed that 62 percent of Florida Republicans favor it. Among Democrats, 83 percent are backing it, including candidate for governor Andrew Gillum.

Another major conservative political organization, the Christian Coalition, has also endorsed Amendment 4. In announcing Freedom Partners’ support, Holden said:

“We believe that when individuals have served their sentences and paid their debts as ordered by a judge, they should be eligible to vote. If we want people returning to society to be productive, law abiding citizens, we need to treat them like full-fledged citizens…. This will make our society safer, our system more just, and provide for real second chances for returning citizens.”

Florida is one of only four states in the Union that permanently bans “returning citizens” from voting until they petition state leaders and are formally returned the ability to vote. In Florida, due to a backlog of thousands of cases, this process will currently take about 15 years –and even then, an applicant can be denied. About 1.4 million people would regain the ability to vote, if Amendment 4 passes this November.

Among those currently banned from voting are thousands of military veterans who encountered problems with the law after leaving the armed forces. And many more thousands of disenfranchised persons have been working and paying taxes for years. They are suffering from “taxation without representation” and that has always been wrong—no matter what party you belong to.

Desmond Meade, president of Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, a group spearheading the Amendment 4 effort, is a returning citizen. Early in life, Meade was convicted of various non-violent crimes related to drug addiction but turned his life around and graduated from Florida International University Law School. He thanked Holden and the Koch Brothers:

“There is a simple reason why this measure has strong, broad support across the ideological spectrum: because Americans believe that when a debt is paid, it’s paid,” Meade said.  “It fixes a broken system for our family members, friends, and neighbors that have paid their debt in full and have earned the opportunity to participate in and give back to their communities.”

Neil Volz, political director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, was convicted of fraud in Washington, D.C., where he was an attorney. Volz moved to Florida after completing probation and spent years trying to regain his ability to vote. The process was so long and onerous he eventually gave up.

Volz, like the Koch Brothers, labels himself an ideological conservative. He says a common misconception about Amendment 4 is the belief that most of the people who will benefit are African-Americans and Hispanics. Since those demographic groups tend to vote Democrat, some people believe passing the amendment would benefit the Democratic Party. But the truth, Volz says, is most people disenfranchised by current clemency rules are white, like him.

“This is an everybody issue,” Volz says. “We have people from all races, all walks of life, all political persuasions, impacted by this.”

The ability to vote is not, and should never be, a partisan issue. Vote “Yes” on Amendment 4!

John Lantigua is the staff investigative journalist for the ACLU of Florida.