Democrats Want Ex-Felons Voting In Florida
Progressive organizations, many financed by billionaire activist George Soros, are working overtime to restore voting rights to nearly 1.4 million ex-felons in Florida, the nation’s biggest swing state.
The current battle revolves around a Florida state amendment passed last year that restored voting rights for felons, with progressive groups opposing a bill that would require the felons to first pay civil fines and court fees before registering to vote.
Florida’s Amendment Four was approved by voters during last year’s midterm election. The heavily Soros-funded American Civil Liberties Union and Brennan Center for Justice based in New York both served as consultants in drafting Amendment Four.
Desmond Meade, president of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, helped put Florida’s Amendment Four on the ballot. Meade’s official bio boasts that in his capacity at the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, he “orchestrated the reorganization and incorporation of a coalition comprised of over 70 state and national organizations and individuals.”
Meade’s coalition, formed to help the ex-felon voting efforts, comprises numerous Soros-financed activist organizations, including the ACLU, NAACP, PICO National Network, and the Florida chapter of the radical League of Women Voters.
Following the passage of Amendment Four, Representative James Grant authored a bill requiring former felons to pay fees before registering to vote. Grant’s bill passed the Florida House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice last month and could come to another vote as soon as this week.
“This bill is just flying directly in the face of what two-thirds of Florida voters said very clearly,” claims Sean Morales-Doyle, an attorney at the Soros-funded Brennan Center. Julie Ebenstein, a lawyer with the Voting Rights Project of the Soros-funded ACLU, claimed Grant’s bill is “truly untethered to the text of the amendment.”
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The restoration of voting rights to ex-felons comes alongside larger efforts by the Democratic Party and progressive organizations to register Florida voters, increase turnout, and lobby Floridians against President Donald Trump.
With its 29 Electoral College votes, Florida is the nation’s biggest swing state and is critical to Trump’s path to victory in the upcoming race. If statewide 2016 voting patterns are repeated, the Democratic candidate for president would be able to win the White House by capturing Florida and one other swing state – Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, or Michigan.
Failed gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum announced his own Florida voter registration initiative committed to registering no less than one million new voters for 2020, aiming to “evict Donald Trump” from the White House.
“We are going to commit ourselves to registering and engaging one million voters between now and 2020’s presidential election,” Gillum said last month in Miami, addressing his new group which calls itself Bring It Home Florida.
“The road to the White House runs through Florida,” Gillum said. “We can deny Donald Trump a second term right here in the state of Florida.”
Billionaire and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is reportedly putting capital into voter turnout and registration efforts in Florida and other swing states.
The Florida Democratic Party itself is reportedly planning to spend at least $2 million to register new voters. The party is seeking to hire full-time organizers and utilize the services of data science firms in their Florida efforts, Politico reported. Juan Peñalosa, executive director of the Florida Democratic Party, said the party would work with Gillum on the drive to flip Florida.
Gillum is leading Democratic efforts focused on implementing Amendment Four. Writing at the Tampa Bay Times last Wednesday, Gillum argued that Grant’s legislation and other bills that would require ex-felons to pay their fines seeks to disenfranchise voters.
Gillum has been closely associated with like-minded progressive groups. This column previously reported that Gillum served as the director of a radical youth training organization whose mission was to challenge U.S. “predatory capitalism,” abolish the prison system, fight a “spiritual resistance” battle against “Christian hegemony,” redefine the meaning of “borders” while aiding “undocumented” aliens, and enact the “collective liberation” of “communities of color” amid what it described as the scourge of “white supremacy.”
Gillum’s group accused the U.S. of being a “colonialist” power perpetrating “structural violence” and “continued genocide.” It claimed conservatives in the U.S. judicial system were “justifying white supremacist policing practices.”
All of that extremist rhetoric and more was posted on the official “issues” sections of the organization’s website while Gillum not only served as its active director, but while his picture, position, and bio were brandished on the site’s “staff” page.
The organization in question is Young People For, or YP4, one of two youth training groups that Gillum directed and oversaw while he worked at the George Soros-financed People for the American Way, or PFAW, as a field organizer in 2002 and then director of Youth Leadership Programs from 2005 until January 13, 2017. He departed PFAW just ahead of his gubernatorial run.
Breitbart News has reported that Gillum graduated from an Oakland, California-based training school for progressive revolutionaries that has spawned a list of activists who have gone on to become the who’s who of the far-left leadership world, with many taking senior positions at organizations financed by Soros.
Graduates of the Rockwood Leadership Institute founded or directed such notorious Soros-financed activist groups, such as Black Lives Matter, Media Matters for America, MoveOn.org, and the Tides Foundation.