Voters in Florida on Election Day approved a measure that restores the voting rights to roughly 1 million felons.
It needed at least 60 percent of the vote to pass, per the state’s constitution, and Amendment 4 passed in Florida, the Associated Press said just before 10 p.m. on Tuesday night.
According to the Sentencing Project’s 2016 estimates, the measure will benefit nearly 1.5 million people in Florida who have completed their felony sentences but can’t vote.
However, that estimate included people convicted of murder and felony sex offenses, who will not be eligible under Amendment 4.
Amendment 4 was supported by Floridians for a Fair Democracy, which gathered more than 1.1 million petitions to put it on the ballot on Tuesday. It received endorsements from the liberal American Civil Liberties Union and the conservative Koch brothers–backed Freedom Partners.
Florida was one of three states, in addition to Kentucky and Iowa, that prevented people from voting even after a completion of a sentence.
Prior to the amendment passing, in Florida, a former convicted felon had to go through a process with the governor to get his or her voting rights restore.
According to the Florida Commission on Offender Review, only 3,005 of more than 30,000 applicants had their voting rights restored through the review process since Gov. Rick Scott, a Republican, implemented it in 2011.
The restoration of voting rights to more than 1 million people will have major implications for Florida going forward — especially in 2020.
The Sentencing Project said in a court filing this year that “while African Americans disenfranchised to a disproportionately high degree in Florida compared to the overall population, two-thirds of Florida’s disenfranchised population are not African American.”
[Opinion: With Florida Amendment 4, felons get a second chance to vote]
