The “voting is a privilege” worldview traces back directly to the culture of Jim Crow, Black Codes and white supremacy in Florida.
The 15th Amendment, passed during Reconstruction after the Civil War, states that the *right* of citizens of the United States to vote *shall not* be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of *race, color, or previous condition of servitude.*
During the same period, Florida enacted a state Constitution with a disenfranchisement clause to deny black people the right to vote by making it a privilege, and giving the police and Jim Crow courts the power to take away that privilege through the criminal justice system.
In 1868, FL had more registered black voters than white. So white legislators classified a range of low-level crimes like vagrancy and petty theft to make them felonies, then convicted black people to permanently disenfranchise them. Voting as a “privilege” to the racist extreme.
So when FL Governor DeSantis calls voting a “privilege” to defend the most restrictive interpretation possible of Florida’s Jim Crow disenfranchisement law, it’s upholding a tradition with the traditional rhetoric that traces directly back to the Jim Crow era.
Florida also was the first state to enact a poll tax, which is the preferred methodology for denying people the vote that Governor DeSantis has enacted. All of this continues the tradition and legacy of Jim Crow racism in FL and it has major implications for the 2020 election.
Read up on Florida History, the kind they *never* taught in Florida schools FYI: historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/…
