Miami Gardens Democratic Rep. Felicia Robinson isn’t giving up on bringing clarity to the confusion that is tripping up thousands of Floridians trying to regain their voting rights after felony convictions.
She just refiled legislation (HB 73[1]) that would require the creation of a public website that shows whether a person has completed every term of their sentence — including supervision, fines, fees and restitution — so they can verify eligibility before registering to vote.
Its goal: to deliver what Florida has lacked since a supermajority of voters approved Amendment 4[2] in 2018. Amendment 4 restored voting rights to most people with prior felony convictions, excluding murderers and sex offenders, upon completion of “all terms” of their sentencing.
The Legislature later passed SB 7066[3] in 2019, which requires[4] payment[5] of all legal financial obligations before rights are restored. A federal appeals court upheld that condition[6] the following year.
But because Florida has no master database of court debt and supervision status, eligibility checks have been a maze of calls to Clerks, courts and relevant agencies. A federal court described the state’s approach to restoring voting rights in 2020 as a “pay-to-vote system” dependent on an “administrative train wreck[7].”
And it led to life-altering confusion. After the state created[8] the Office of Election Crimes and Security in 2022, the state arrested 20 felons for voting in the 2020 election while ineligible. Many said they believed they could vote and had even received their voter registration card.
Florida Politics checked on those cases[9] in August, finding that two General Elections later, one suspect had his case dismissed, nine were sentenced to probation, community service or another fine, and one had died. Meanwhile, eight others remained in legal limbo, with their cases under review.
Robinson told Florida Politics on Friday that she’d spoken to former House Speaker Paul Renner, current Speaker Daniel Perez, Secretary of State Cord Byrd and the Commission on Offender Review about addressing the issue. Renner said he’d look into the matter, but that she’s since had “challenges finding out what the end result was of that research.” Perez, she said, “didn’t have any opposition to it” and encouraged her to “work the bill.”
Byrd was noncommittal. And while the Commission on Offender Review seemed “a good place to work on this,” Robinson said, it has a very small staff likely incapable of handling the workload such a database would produce.
“One of the challenges my research has found is that all the different counties and municipalities have different systems, and they don’t connect to each other, so if you’re trying to determine whether you have completed your hours, paid all your fees and done everything, there’s no one place to go get that information,” she said. “This bill, I believe, will correct the unintended consequences of the policies that have been put in place after Amendment 4. It’s a commonsense bill that doesn’t have just one use; it will be beneficial for our law enforcement, courts and everyone to have this information in one place.”
HB 73, which is substantively identical to legislation (SB 848[10], HB 489[11]) that Robinson carried last Session with Boca Raton Democratic Sen. Tina Scott Polsky, which died without a hearing, would task the Commission on Offender Review with solving the issue.
Robinson confirmed she asked Polsky to again sponsor her bill’s Senate companion.
If passed, the measure would require the agency to establish a single, online database containing all pertinent information about a returning citizen’s eligibility criteria. The Commission would collect monthly data from the Department of State, the Department of Corrections, Clerks of Court, and other relevant agencies, and maintain a searchable website with plain-language instructions on rights restoration and voter registration.
A comprehensive implementation plan would be due July 1, 2027. The site would have to go live on July 1, 2029.
Notably, Robinson’s bill wouldn’t change who is eligible to have their voting rights restored. It would simply make it quicker and more reliable to know who is eligible, while adding transparency to the process by requiring regular updates and public access.
Before joining forces with Robinson on the database-creating legislation[12] last Session, Polsky sponsored another bill she developed with the League of Women Voters, with House support from North Miami Democratic Rep. Dotie Joseph, to require the state to inform ex-felons within 90 days of a query about whether they could again cast ballots. Under the measure, which also died unheard, if a person did not receive an answer within that time frame, they wouldn’t be subject to criminal penalties if they tried to vote.
“When they were defending their legislation in court,” she said, “they said, ‘Well, we can just tell people if they’re eligible.’ But we know what happened was that all of these folks got their voter registration cards and still got arrested for voting.”
HB 73 was the first bill Robinson filed for the 2026 Session. It would take effect on July 1.
References
- ^ HB 73 (www.flhouse.gov)
- ^ Amendment 4 (ballotpedia.org)
- ^ SB 7066 (www.flsenate.gov)
- ^ requires (floridapolitics.com)
- ^ payment (floridapolitics.com)
- ^ upheld that condition (floridapolitics.com)
- ^ administrative train wreck (s3.documentcloud.org)
- ^ created (dos.fl.gov)
- ^ checked on those cases (floridapolitics.com)
- ^ SB 848 (www.flsenate.gov)
- ^ HB 489 (www.flhouse.gov)
- ^ database-creating legislation (floridapolitics.com)