In Florida’s November 2018 election, voters approved the following amendment to their state’s constitution:

“Except as provided in subsection (b) of this section, any disqualification from voting arising from a felony conviction shall terminate and voting rights shall be restored upon completion of all terms of sentence including parole or probation. (b) No person convicted of murder or a felony sexual offense shall be qualified to vote until restoration of civil rights.”

Seems pretty clear and concise, doesn’t it? If you’re a convicted felon who’s not a murderer or a rapist, once you’ve “paid your debt to society,” you get to vote just like any other citizen. Period.

But governor-elect Ron DeSantis announced that the measure would require “implementing legislation.”

CNN reports that two bills now working their way through Florida’s  Republican-dominated House and Senate would “implement” the amendment by levying unconstitutional poll taxes  —  court costs and incarceration fees,  running from a few hundred dollars to as high as tens of thousands of dollars  — on the newly eligible voters as a condition of registering and voting.

Jeff Brandes, vice chairman of the state Senate’s Criminal Justice committee, claims that the clear, concise, and unambiguous constitutional amendment, passed with the approval of nearly 65% of those voting, needs to be “further refined and honed.”

Why? Well …

In the 2016 presidential election, Republican Donald Trump beat Democrat Hillary Clinton by about 113,000 votes in Florida.

In 2018, governor DeSantis beat his Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, by about 32,500 votes. Outgoing Republican governor Rick Scott beat the incumbent US Senator, Democrat Bill Nelson, by about 10,000 votes.

The passage of Amendment 4 potentially adds as many as 1.4 million voters to the state’s rolls.

Who are these new voters?

Proportionally, they are more likely to be African-American than white. As of 2010, according to a University of Georgia study, 8% of Americans were convicted felons, but 33% of African-American males fell into that category. And 20% of Florida’s African-American population had felony convictions on their records.

African-American voters overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic Party’s candidates for public office.

If Amendment 4 is implemented as clearly, concisely, and unambiguously written, Florida will cease to be America’s biggest presidential “swing state.” Its 29 electoral votes will move solidly into the Democratic column.

Creative gerrymandering might allow Republicans to maintain control of the state’s legislature and US House delegation, but the governor’s mansion and Florida’s two US Senate seats will go, and stay, blue.

Rather than work to avert this outcome by courting the African-American vote, Florida’s Republicans are falling back on a strategy their party has vigorously pursued nationwide for  decades: Find ways to keep African-Americans from voting.

But this time, Florida’s voters have spoken. Clearly. Concisely. Unambiguously. Don’t like it? Too bad. Republicans defy the people at their peril.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Florida: Why Republican Lawmakers are Defying — and Denying — the Voters,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 03/25/19
• “Florida: Why Republican Lawmakers are Defying — and Denying — the Voters,” by Thomas L. Knapp, River Cities’ Reader (Iowa), 03/25/19
• “Florida: Why Republican Lawmakers are Defying–and Denying–the Voters,” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 03/27/19
• “Florida: Why Republican Lawmakers are Defying — and Denying — the Voter,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 04/01/19

Everywhere one looks these days, the world seems to be moving away from debate on contentious subjects and toward demands that those who have unpopular opinions — or even just ask impertinent questions — be forcibly silenced.

“You will never hear me mention his name,”  prime minister Jacinda Ardern said of Brenton Tarrant, the sole suspect in two deadly attacks on mosques in Christchurch. “He may have sought notoriety but here in New Zealand we will give him nothing — not even his name.”

That’s fine as a personal decision, I guess, but not as a top-down decision for her fellow New Zealanders. Even as Ardern spoke,  police working for her government  were arresting at least two people for sharing the shooter’s live-streamed video of the attacks on social media.

Across the Tasman Sea, Australian prime minister Scott Morrison is calling on the governments of G20 countries to implement measures “including appropriate filtering, detecting and removing of content by actors who encourage, normalise, recruit, facilitate or commit terrorist and violent atrocities.”

Let’s be clear about what Morrison, other “world leaders,” and significant segments of activist communities and even the general public, are demanding (and to a frightful degree already implementing): Internet censorship.

This isn’t really a new development. The mosque attacks are merely the latest incident weaponized by politicians and activists in service to a long-running campaign against public discussion and debate that requires them to make arguments and persuade instead of just bark orders and compel.

The fictional “memory hole” of the IngSoc regime in George Orwell’s 1984 stood for more than half a century as an oft-cited and wisely acknowledged warning. Now that hole is opening up beneath us for real and threatening to suck us down into a new Dark Age of “thoughtcrime” and “unpersons.”

The threat is content-independent. Renaming climate change skeptics “deniers” and demanding “investigations” of them, or pressuring media to ban discussions of policy on vaccines, is just as evil as suing Alex Jones for promulgating bizarre theories about the Sandy Hook massacre.

The only appropriate response to “bad” speech — that is, speech one disagrees with — is “better” speech.

Attempting to shut down your opponents’ ability to participate in an argument isn’t itself a winning argument. Forbidding your opponents to speak to a problem doesn’t solve that problem.

In fact, those tactics are tantamount to admitting that your arguments are less persuasive and that your solutions can’t withstand scrutiny.

Freedom of thought and expression are primary, foundational rights. They make it possible for us to hash out issues and solve problems peaceably instead of by force. Any attempt to suppress them is itself a call for totalitarianism and the alternative to those liberties is social and political death.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Suppressing discussion doesn’t solve the problem. It is the problem.” by Thomas L. Knapp, Cornwall, Ontario Seaway News, 03/22/19
• “Suppressing Discussion Doesn’t Solve the Problem. It is the Problem.” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 03/23/19
• “Suppressing Discussion Doesn’t Solve the Problem. It is the Problem.” by Thomas L. Knapp, Aravot [Armenia], 03/23/19
• “Suppressing discussion doesn’t solve problems,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Wilson, North Carolina Times, 03/25/19
• “Suppressing Discussion Doesn’t Solve the Problem. It is the Problem.” by Thomas L. Knapp, CounterPunch, 03/25/19
• “Suppressing discussion never solves the problem,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Dhaka, Bangladesh New Nation [web and print], 03/25/19
• “Suppressing discussion doesn’t solve problem,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Duluth, Minnesota Superior Telegram, 03/26/19
• “Suppressing Discussion Doesn’t Solve the Problem. It is the Problem.” by Thomas L. Knapp, River Cities’ Reader (Iowa), 03/23/19
• “Fight censorship of any kind,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Greenville, North Carolina Daily Reflector, 03/27/19
• “Suppressing discussion doesn’t solve problems; it is the problem,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Claremont, New Hampshire Eagle Times, 03/28/19
• “Suppressing Discussion Doesn’t Solve the Problem. It is the Problem,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal,  03/28/19
• “Suppressing discussion is the problem,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Cook Islands News, 04/03/19
• “Suppressing Discussion Doesn’t Solve the Problem. It is the Problem.” by Thomas L. Knapp, Goa, India Herald, 04/27/19