Conviction politics: Florida’s disenfranchised felons

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host, Shashank Joshi, filling in for Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide you with a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Colombia is the only democracy whose police force is run by the Defence Ministry. The country's cops are poorly paid, overworked and very heavily armed. A recent case of police brutality in Bogota has sparked big protests and calls for reform. And Dutch farmers normally raise about two and a half million mink a year for their fur, making the Netherlands one of the biggest producers in the world. But it turns out that the cuddly creatures can carry COVID 19 and pass it to humans. Luckily for them, that turns out to have saved their skin. First up, though, Joe Biden took to the campaign trail in Florida earlier this week. At a rally for Hispanic voters, Mr. Biden emphasized what seemed like a prosaic getting people out to vote.

So please, this election, make your vote heard. Through your vote, your voice is heard. Make a plan to vote, as been pointed out, make a plan to help your community vote.

But the very act of voting in this year's election has become contentious. President Trump has been railing against mail in voting despite there being little evidence of fraud.

This whole ballot system where you can send it in and it's not even requested, we're not talking about it solicited, they're unsolicited ballots and they're sent in is very dangerous for our country.

And in Florida, a fight over voting rights for former felons could see hundreds of thousands of people disenfranchised.

So in 2018, voters in Florida approved a constitutional amendment allowing felons who had served their time, except for murderers and certain sex related offenders, to vote in elections. After that amendment passed, Florida's Republican legislature passed a law saying that's fine, they can vote, but they have to pay back all the fines, fees and sort of restitution costs of their incarceration.

John Fassman is the Economist's Washington correspondent.

So that's the sort of thing that sounds quite reasonable, right? If you stole 100 bucks from someone, you gotta pay back what you stole before you can vote. But Florida's criminal justice system is unusually reliant on fines and fees from offenders. So you had people who'd been convicted of felonies, poor people who had to pay $50 to get a public defender or 100 bucks for some sort of fee to file a complaint, and then you also had fines levied on them that were quite heavy. So I spoke to one woman who was convicted of her part in a fraud scheme that she says was unwitting, but she was ordered to pay back $59 million. Now, no one's ever going to be able to do that. I spent time with another young man who was was convicted of a felony while he was basically just out of school. And it turns out that when he went to register to vote, he owed $4,000 to the county where he was arrested. Nobody had ever told him that.

And are the courts allowing this law to stand?

The courts have let it stand. On Friday, the last court in Florida weighed in, and they've let this stand. The court said that fines and fees were part of the criminal sentence, so they couldn't be said to have fully completed their full sentence until they had paid off everything that they were told to pay off. So it looks as though almost 800,000 people who thought they would be able to vote may not be able to vote.

And so is the Supreme Court likely to weigh in at this point now?

Again, it's probably not going to go to the Supreme Court again. They declined to hear it in July before that last appeal. They declined over the strong objections of Justice Sotomayor, who accused her colleagues of continuing a trend of condoning disenfranchisement.

That's in Florida. Is this happening anywhere else?

Well, the rules regarding where and how felons can vote change dramatically from state to state. You have some states like Vermont and Maine where people can vote while they're in prison. And you have some states like Florida used to be, where if you've been convicted of a felony at any time, you never have the right to vote. So it's a patchwork of laws regarding felony enfranchisement. The trend has been over the past decade or so to loosen restrictions rather than strengthen them. But as we've seen in Florida, sometimes that involves backsliding, and sometimes the loosening isn't as loose in practice as it appears it should be.

Felons aside, how easy or hard is it in general for people to exercise their right to vote in America?

It's harder than I think it should be. It's harder than most people think it should be. It used to be the case that the Voting Rights act, which was passed in 1965, required jurisdictions with a history of voter discrimination to submit any changes to how they conduct elections to the Justice Department. In 2013, the Supreme Court basically gutted the Voting Rights Act. They said that requirements should no longer apply. Since then, around 1700 polling places have closed in previously covered jurisdictions. The largest numbers were in Texas, Arizona and Georgia. And most of those places are in heavily minority districts. There's also the problem of long lines. Often what I found when I was recovering Super Tuesday in Texas, before everything shut down, is that in suburban precincts, which are mostly white, it was much easier to vote than in inner city precincts, which were heavily African American or Latino. In 2016, around half a million voters failed to cast a ballot at their polling places because of problems at those polling locations. So I think people tend to think of voter suppression as physically keeping people away from the polls. That really doesn't happen. What does happen is that the exercise of the franchise is likelier to be much more onerous if you are a non white than if you were white.

Are we seeing any of those problems this round, this time around for the election that's coming up?

Yeah. We saw them in full force in Wisconsin in their primary earlier this spring. In April, they had a shortage of poll workers as much of America does. As a result, there are only five precincts total in the city of Milwaukee, which is the state's biggest city and which had 180 precincts in 2016. There are a lot of places that are really concerned about having enough poll workers to have all the polling places that should be open. Poll workers tend to be retirees, which puts them at high risk of COVID And so a lot of them understandably, don't want to come out and sit in a crowded place for long hours. But there's a fear that this shortage of poll workers is going to lead to a lot fewer polling places than there should be.

Perhaps it's a naive question, but why would anyone want to make it harder for people to vote?

So there are those who say that because Republicans are so dependent on older white voters who tend to be the most reliable voters, that it is in their interest to make it harder for non white and young voters to vote. Donald Trump, when he was talking about Expanding postal voting essentially gave the game away. He said they had things, levels of voting that if you ever agreed to it, you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again. So it seems as though Republicans, rather than trying to appeal to as many voters as possible, regardless of race or color or creed or age, are really trying to tailor the electorate to best suit themselves.

What about voting by mail? Something that would seem obvious in a pandemic, but that's been hugely divisive this round, hasn't it?

Yeah, Donald Trump has been inveighing against it, which is odd because there's a ton of research that shows that voting by mail tends to improve turnout, but not for any particular political party. More recently, he has been encouraging his supporters to vote by mail. I think he has gotten nervous that if Democrats vote by mail in huge numbers and Republicans don't vote by mail at all, then this may lead to an imbalance in the results that doesn't favor him. There have been polls that have shown that as many as 50% of Democrats or more plan to vote by mail, whereas only 1 in 5 Republicans do. You can imagine a sort of pandemic situation in red states where Republicans don't want to go to the polls, but think that voting by mail is corrupt. I think he is now trying to walk back some of the damage he may have caused.

How do all these trends impact the election this year, do you think, John?

I think that between the president inveighing against the election, warning that it's going to be rigged, concerns about foreign interference, there is an alarming number of Americans, people on both sides of the aisle, who think that this year's election won't be free and fair. I think there are concerns that people may be less likely to vote and that once they vote, they'll be less likely to accept the results of the elections. That is going to lead people to lose faith in democracy itself.

For those who do want to get the vote out, what are they doing about it?

Well, people can check their registration status early. They can make sure that their friends and neighbors are all registered. I think there's a lot of worry among Democrats because the traditional touch points that they use to register voters, you know, the DMV or college voter registration drives, those aren't happening now because of the pandemic. And there are fears that young people are not registering at the numbers they should be. But for Florida's felons, there have been organizations that are working to pay off fines and fees. Almost $4 million have been raised so far. Bloomberg, who had been running for president, said he will spend $100 million of his own money to help Joe Biden win in Florida. I think there's a hope that some of that will go to paying off fines and fees. But unfortunately it looks like whatever happens, not everyone who thought that they would be eligible to vote will in fact be eligible to vote this fall in Florida.

John, thank you for talking to us.

Always a pleasure, Shashank.

For the latest on the American election in the run up to November, and for more of John, listen to checks and balance available every Friday. Colombia has been rocked by an outpouring of rage against its police. Earlier this month in the capital, Bogota, police arrested Javier Ordonez, a taxi driver and father of two, for drinking alcohol on the street. A video that went viral shows an officer with his knee pressed against Mr. Ordonez's back and using a Taser. Police stopped the filming, but witnesses say he was unconscious when they took him to a police station. He died hours later in hospital. His death sparked days of protest that left 13 people dead and hundreds injured. Protesters and activists say police brutality is out of control. The mayor of Bogota on Sunday led a gathering where an orchestra gave a concert for peace and bereaved relatives called for change. One was a woman named Mayra Paez.

I am the wife of Haida Fonseca, the mother of a seven month old child whom the national police left without a father the last 9th of September. They've left a son without the right to know his father, the right to grow up with him.

And the mayor, Claudia Lopez herself, called for reform of the police.

The solution is not to militarize Bogota.

But to demilitarize the police.

Colombia is perhaps the only democracy in the world in which the entire police force is under the control of the Ministry of Defence.

Mariana Palau covers Colombia for the Economist.

There are other countries that have a militarized police force, but that is only part of their police, sort of in addition to a less militarized police. Colombia is a long way from reaching that stage. Sometimes it's really hard to differentiate policemen from soldiers. They both wear military green uniforms. They both use the same military ranks. Policemen often carry rifles, and you can also see them flying Black Hawks, for example, as they are searching the jungle for coca or illegal armed groups. In recent years, reports of abuse by the cops are getting more and more common.

So, Mariana, how do these heavily armed police cope with the challenges of a city like Bogota?

So the problem is that there's not enough policemen to patrol the streets. So most policemen are overworked, they're exhausted because they work overtime. And this leads to poor quality policing. And that is part of the reason why you see severe forms of urban crime. So there's high murder rates. Mugging is really common. Domestic and sexual violence are on the rise. In Bogota, for example, you've seen bike thefts increasing. Some people have even been murdered because thieves will stop at nothing to steal their bikes. And the way that police deal with this is defined by some experts as not exactly appropriate. So for example, they target street beggars and transsexuals often, and they can be verbally abusive. Bogota's mayor's office has had about 130 complaints of excessive use of force coming from the police. But that is actually an understatement of how much force is actually used, because most people don't report this kind of abuse.

As you pointed out, most countries have their police under civilian control. Are some of these problems to do with the fact that the Colombian police are under the Defence Ministry?

Well, one of the main issues is they compete for resources with the army in particular. So for example, a former police general told me that whenever he tried to increase his men's salaries, the army would demand soldiers salaries to be increased as well. Then you have issues like an important part of the police consists of conscripts. And then there's the cultural issue, because experts told me that policemen in Colombia, for example, glorify going after guerrilla groups. And you have to remember Colombia had the farc, a left wing guerrilla group who wanted to overthrow the government. And police here also love going after narcos, which Colombia saw a lot of narco cartels back in the 90s. But, but then preventing crime for the police is just not that sexy. But former police generals have told me that as long as the police is under the control of the Ministry of Defence, there's no way that these issues are going to be solved.

So how did the police end up as this paramilitary appendage of the Defence Ministry in the first place?

I think you have to go back to the 1950s to answer that question. So Colombia back then was going through a period of political violence, and mayors who were in charge of local police forces were using them to kill their political opponents. So the president back then, Gustavo Rojas Pinillah, he, by the way, was an army general. He made the police a national institution and put it under the control of the Ministry of Defense. Then during Colombia's 52 year armed conflict, he it made a lot of sense to have a militarized police force because the government needed all of its security forces to fight off the FARC. And, you know, in the 90s, we saw the rise of drug lords like Pablo Escobar and several drug cartels. And these had their own militias and they were heavily armed. So the government also needed a militarized police to fight them off. And the truth is that Colombia's police, they were highly strengthened by billions of dollars in usaid. They did lead one of the most or some of the most important blows against the FARC and were key in dismantling the cartels.

Maybe there was an argument then for a militarised police force back in Colombia's more lawless days. Are the police still dealing with that kind of war zone environment today?

Escobar has been dead for more than 25 years, and the FARC signed a peace deal with the government in 2016, and they demobilized. So Colombia's threats have changed since then. And this police force, which was really good at fighting guerrillas, doesn't seem so good at fighting these new threats. So, for example, in rural Colombia, there are still illegal armed groups. They're much smaller than the guerrilla, less ideological, but they still focus on drug trafficking, and they extort businesses, they kill community leaders. And the police haven't been able to stop these threats. And, you know, I think it's pretty telling that during the pandemic, it is these illegal armed groups, not the police, who have been enforcing lockdown measures to stop the spread of the disease. I think it's important to mention that there is awareness that post conflict, Colombia needs a different kind of police. The subject of a police reform has been an on and off matter of debate for some years now. I mean, Juan Manuel Santos, who was president of Colombia and signed the peace deal with the Farquhars, set up a commission that would propose a police reform reform. But he quickly lost interest in it, and we never saw anything come out of that.

Going back to this month's violent protests and calls by the mayor of Bogota for reform, do you think change might be on the way?

The president, Ivan Duque, refuses to consider a reform. And this has a lot to do with political reasons, because the right wing parties that back the president have historically defended the country's security forces, and they just see police reform as an attack on the police. Some government officials say that the rising power of violent groups in rural Colombia justifies a militarized police force. And that does make some sense. But I also think that the protests have Shown that at least part of the police needs to change and that if it doesn't, Colombia's leaders can expect more unrest.

Mariana, thank you.

Thank you, Shashank.

For a lot more analysis like this, subscribe to the Economist. To find the best introductory offer wherever you are, just go to economist.com intelligenceoffer you might not have heard a mink before, but you probably have seen the small weasel like creatures, or at least their fur, often used for coats. Since 2000, at least eight European countries have banned fur farming. But in the Netherlands, mink farmers had permission to carry on their trade for a few more years until COVID 19 happened.

Initially, the Netherlands was scheduled to end mink farming as of 2024. They had adopted a law in 2013 which gave farmers 10 years to get out of the business.

Matt Steinglass is our deputy Europe editor.

But they have pulled that ban forward to 2021 because it was discovered this spring that mink can get and spread COVID 19.

How did that happen? How did somebody figure out that minks can spread COVID 19 to humans?

In April, a few of the workers at some of these mink farms in southern Netherlands came down with COVID 19. And it wasn't clear initially whether they had spread it among themselves or whether the animals were infected too. So they tested the animals. The animals turned out to be positive. And then they did some genetic testing which found that in at least two cases, it was overwhelmingly likely that the humans had been infected by the mink rather than the other way around. So that established for the first time that these animals could spread it to humans. And the number of mink farms that the disease spread to rose very quickly. So that created a great deal of concern in the Dutch government and led to a vote to bring the ban forward.

That sounds like an unexpected win for animal rights activists.

Yeah, they had already won the big battle back in 2013 by getting the ban passed. The Netherlands is the fourth biggest mink farming country in the world after Denmark, Poland and China. And it had already banned other forms of fur farming at the behest of the Dutch Party for the Animals, which is a remarkably strong political party. It has four seats in the Dutch parliament, which has 150 seats. It's the first and definitely the biggest and most powerful animal rights party in the world. And the big win in this case was just that they managed to get the ban pulled forward by several years because of public health concerns.

So, good for the party, good for the minks. What do the farmers have to say about all of this.

The farmers obviously are disappointed. They knew they were getting out of the business, they'd accepted that, but they're having to do it three years early. They say that the total turnover of the industry is about 150 million to 200 million a year. The animal rights activists put the figure much lower, below 100 million. And there's been a glut of mink on the market in the last few years. So the fur prices have been extremely low. And it's not clear whether the compensation that's been offered to farmers who have had their mink destroyed because of the COVID 19 infection has been higher than the market value of the mink fur itself. But the farmers nevertheless say if the government is going to tell them they have to get out of the business three years early, then the government has to compensate them for that. The animal rights activists feel that everybody has to suffer because of COVID 19. And the idea that farmers should be paid extra to get out of a business that they already knew they were leaving seems unfair in these difficult times.

What about the ethics of this? How unsavory is modern mink farming?

Minks have been farmed for a long time, actually over a hundred years. And there have been successive steps to try to make the farming of mink more humane. Farmers obviously claim that conditions at their farms are quite favorable and reasonable. But animal rights activists say that you can't farm mink in a humane fashion because mink in the wild are solitary, predatory animals. The contention is that they can't humanely be raised in barns full of stacked cages. And there hasn't been that much work done to try to breed a variety of mink that finds being cooped up more palatable.

And among Dutch voters, do animal rights activists outnumber the mink wearers?

They definitely outnumber the mink wearers. There hasn't been testing specifically on the move to bring the ban forward. But in the past, all the polls of the Dutch public have shown that more people are in favor of banning fur farming.

Then defend it.

Thank you very much, Matt.

Thank you, Shashank.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you enjoyed listening to us, please give us a rating on Apple Podcasts and see you back here tomorrow. Sam.