At the end of this month, thousands of protesters, journalists, and political activists will descend on the Tampa Bay area for the 2012 Republican National Convention. And with their arrival comes increased police presence, new local laws, and millions of dollars in surveillance and law enforcement equipment, all of which will change the way citizens in the area live their lives and understand their rights.

Join us on Tuesday, August 7, from 6 to 8 p.m. for 2012 RNC in Tampa: What You Need to Know, a free forum on what the RNC means for you and what you can do to protect your rights. We'll discuss the rights of demonstrators and photographers, the permitting process and other rules and restrictions passed for the event, and take questions from the attendees on how you can stand up for your rights.

The event will feature leaders from the ACLU of Florida; First Amendment experts Dr. Bruce Friesen from the University of Tampa Human Rights Think Tank, and Prof. Louis Virelli of Stetson University College of Law; and civic leaders such as Public Defender Julianne Holt, Tampa City Attorney James Shimberg, and Tampa Police Department Assistant Chief John Bennett.

The event is co-sponsored by the University of Tampa and is free and open to the public. To RSVP or if you have any additional questions or comments, please contact our Mid-Florida Regional Director Joyce Hamilton Henry at jhamiltonhenry@aclufl.org.

Invite your friends, family, and anyone else who will be impacted by the RNC. We look forward to seeing you at the forum!

 

This week, we made a bombshell discovery in our work defending the right to vote in Florida against voter suppression. A public records request we filed with the Florida Parole Commission has uncovered 17,604 Restoration of Civil Rights (RCR) certificates that were returned to the Parole Commission as “undeliverable."

That means over 17,000 formerly-incarcerated Floridians have had their voting and civil rights restored but haven't received official notice from the state. After further investigation, we found that about 77% of the citizens who had the right to vote but haven't received their notices - 13,517 Florida citizens - haven't registered to vote yet, and may not even know that they have the right to vote at all.

The ACLU is encouraging Florida citizens who applied to have their rights restored but who have not received a response from the state to either:

• call the Florida Parole Commission at 1-800-435-8286;
• visit the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC) website at www.restorerights.org, and click “How to Restore Rights” to learn about checking your status.
• or contact your local county Supervisor of Elections office for assistance in checking your status and determining whether you are eligible to vote.

It should be no surprise that Governor Scott, who rolled back the rights restoration reforms of his predecessor, hasn't done more to help the Parole Commission contact these citizens about their voting rights. As ACLU of Florida Executive Director Howard Simon put it, “The contrast between the baseless claims that Governor Scott has made about voter fraud and the lengths to which he has gone to make voting more difficult, and the inattention to the thousands of voting rights restoration certifications gathering dust in the capitol could not be sharper."

Read our press release to learn more about this week's discovery, Florida's system of lifetime disfranchisement for former felons, and the work the ACLU is doing to reform it.