Southern Poverty Law Center

Since the FLJC began in 2019, it has conducted more than 1,000 eligibility checks, including some 300 in 2024.

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Vote Your Voice: Florida Justice Center critical to returning citizens

By Rhonda Sonnenberg | Read the full story here

Friend,

J.S. showed up at the Fort Lauderdale office of the Florida Justice Center (FLJC) this past fall to find out if he was qualified to vote in the presidential election.

A 50-year-old Black man, J.S., whose name has been abbreviated in this story to protect his identity, had been out of prison for years after serving an eight-year sentence for a drug conviction. He had never voted before, and like many returning citizens, he prioritized getting a car, finding a job and starting a family. Now he wanted to become a fully participating member of society — part of a tide of formerly incarcerated people whose eagerness to vote in the recent election, advocates say, dwarfed numbers they’ve seen in the past.

Unfortunately, J.S. started the process too late to be qualified in time to vote in the Nov. 5 election, and he didn’t know that he owed back fines and fees to the state.

“People don’t know [that the process may take two months], and people who come to us in October are surprised that the vetting won’t be done by the election,” said Darrell Guilford, director of programs for the FLJC. “We have to break the news to them.”

The FLJC is the only nonprofit legal aid organization active in all 67 Florida counties that conducts complete FBI and Florida Department of Law Enforcement background checks, including fingerprint checks, as part of its process to determine voter eligibility. If an FLJC attorney determines a client to be eligible, they submit a request to the Florida Clerk of Courts for an advisory opinion so that the client can register without fear of prosecution.

Last year, the Southern Poverty Law Center awarded the FLJC a three-year, $150,000 Vote Your Voice (VYV) grant. The VYV program was established in 2020 through a partnership with the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta and is making $100 million in grants available to help grassroots organizations in the Deep South build capacity and extend their voter outreach and civic engagement efforts over the next decade.

Since the FLJC began in 2019, it has conducted more than 1,000 eligibility checks, including some 300 in 2024. Nearly 90% of the clients self-identify as Black, Indigenous, and people of color and have an average annual income of $12,800. With the grant, the organization hopes to serve another 4,000 people annually, in part by deepening its reach to younger clients of color and, particularly, to returning citizens in North Florida, where impoverished communities have the least access to legal services.

“It is vital to our democracy to ensure that those who register to vote are doing so legally and with confidence,” said Robin Brulé, Vote Your Voice program officer for the SPLC. “The Florida Justice Center is dedicated to ensuring that all of us have a seat at the table in this democracy.”

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