It’s been a while since I’ve dissected an entire article on the blog, so I’m going to do that now to an important story from South Florida Gay News about a ballot initiative that was supposed to reinstate voting rights to those who had completed their sentence for a felony crime but that left in place impediments that will make it difficult for many people to actually get their right to vote restored.
In addition to my usual caveat—I don't claim to be perfect, and I'm pointing out these errors in a spirit of helpful criticism, not know-it-all-ness—I’m going to add this one: Community journalism is a thankless and difficult job that generally pays very little and requires sitting through endless meetings (of the school board, town council, planning board, and, oy, maybe even the zoning board) on weekday evenings when you’d rather be stretching out and seeking inner peace at yoga class or watching The Good Place.1 I respect people who do this work, though I'm thankful I'm no longer one of them.2 🙏
Let's start with the article's headline, which in the paper version of SFGN was "AMENDMENT 4 RESTORED THE RIGHT TO VOTE TO FELONS BUT THERE'S A CATCH!" The subhead was "Some LGBTQ ex-felons will never get to cast a ballot." The head doesn't tell the reader as much as it might, and the subhead is almost a restatement, given that "BUT THERE'S A CATCH!," which is in much larger type than the first part of the head, strongly implies—well, actually, SHOUTS—the restoration is a no-go. I'd have gone with something like "DESPITE AMENDMENT 4 PASSAGE, MANY LGBTQ EX-FELONS WILL NEVER GET TO CAST A BALLOT." The subhead could give the missing main reason: "Restoration of right to vote requires paying high court fees."
The reader doesn't learn about those court fees, which might be in the hundreds of dollars or as much as tens of thousands of dollars, until the ninth paragraph. That's because the first eight paragraphs are mostly taken up with an interview with Latrice Royale, a beloved drag queen who lives in the Fort Lauderdale area and is currently appearing on the fourth season of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars.3
I would have divided this article into two separate stories: the newsier one that gives the facts behind the "catch" and a large (and in charge) sidebar that focuses on Latrice, who, before her first appearance on Drag Race, in season 4 of the regular (non-All Stars) version of the show, served about a year in prison for possession of cannabis and Klonopin without a prescription and who advocated for passage of Amendment 4.4 If there were room, I'd include the quotes from Trinity "The Tuck" Taylor, who's also in All Stars 4 and is currently going by the name Trinity the Tuck (because she's really good at hiding her male parts). But Trinity lives up in Orlando and doesn't have a personal connection to the issue, so I wouldn't feel a need to keep her in the story, even though I think she's a fierce queen.
Splitting the story into two parts would prevent readers from having to wait until paragraph 14 to learn that sleeping in public is a felony crime(!) in Florida and until paragraph 24 to learn 1) Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who opposed Amendment 4 prior to the election, has said the state legislature must pass "implementation language" before his administration will allow the change to go into effect and 2) the next legislative session doesn't begin until March 5.
In the previous paragraph, there's a verbless nonsense sentence that implies county election supervisors are another potential barrier to voting rights reinstatement without explaining the why of that situation: "But the implementation of Amendment 4 faces other roadblocks apart from lingering court fees. Election supervisors in the state's 67 counties for restoring former felons' voting rights." The link in the online version of the SFGN story doesn't work, but I think it may have been going to this Tampa Bay Times article from early December about how election supervisors were unsure how to act, having been given unclear guidance from the state.
The 25th paragraph starts out with this sentence: "Some felons may not realize that they need to finish their probationary sentences or pay court fees before re-applying to vote." The reader didn't know about the probation issue before this point either; this is the first mention of it in the story.
The next sentence says the amendment can act as a trap for those who incorrectly think they've done everything necessary to be able to vote again: "As such, if they check the box on the voter registration forms which said 'I affirm that I am not a convicted felon, or if I am, my right to vote has been restored,' they could be found guilty of another felony." That's messed up!
I would have worded the first part of that sentence this way: "As such, if they check the box on their voter registration form that says 'I affirm ....'"
Back to the 17th paragraph, the as should be an are: "Because felons are regularly excluded from employment opportunities and public benefits, Greenberg said the current legal consequences for felons as punitive enough without adding extra penalties." I'm betting the said used to be sees. Greenberg is Scott Greenberg, executive director of the Freedom Fund, "a non-profit fighting the mass jailing of LGBTQ people." Nonprofit is usually spelled without a hyphen.
And back to the fourth paragraph: "After being released, Wilcots"—Latrice's given name is Timothy Wilcots—"discovered he could no longer participate in elections thanks to a 1868 state constitutional amendment specifically designed to reduce the number of black voters. The amendment disproportionately affected black Floridians as they make up 46 percent of the state's prison population despite being only 16 percent of the general population." The article before 1868 should be an, not a. And the switch from the past tense to the present should be handled differently: The amendment (currently) disproportionately affects black Floridians because of the staggering 30-percentage-point difference between black representation in the prison population and in the general population.
Also, if I were the editor, I would have asked the writer for his source and its time frame. I'm not doubting the figures' legitimacy; I just think it's important to say where the numbers came from and to show how recent they are.
Actually, hold on: I just looked back at the digital version of the story, and there's a link that shows the source is the Prison Policy Initiative and the data are derived from the 2010 U.S. census, so they're not incredibly recent.
Finally, some clarity is needed about the proportion of prisoners who identify as LGBT.5 Here's paragraph 19: "In fact, [Greenberg] said that LGBT people should take a particular interest in this issue since they're three times more likely to be incarcerated than the general public." Is that in the U.S. or only in Florida? I assume that's for the entire country.
Here's paragraph six: "Amendment 4 seemed posed to benefit the estimated 5 percent of male prisoners and 33 percent of female prisoners who identify as LGBT, and to majorly overhaul the state's old way of restoring convicts' voting rights, a process that could take anywhere from 15 to 38 years with no guarantee of approval." Three things in regard to that: 1) Posed should be poised. 2) I see no need for the comma after LGBT. And 3) According to the most recent data I could find online, 5.1% of women and 3.9% of men (to use the source's binary terms) in the U.S. identify as LGBT. That's per a Gallup poll that was written up in May 2018 but was described as representing the year 2017. Those figures suggest the proportion of LBT-identified prisoners in women's facilities far exceeds the proportion of women who identify as LBT in the general population. With men, it seems like GBT-identified people make up slightly more of the prison population than they do the general population.
1If you're not watching that show, you should be. It's the smartest TV comedy I've ever watched and reliably hilarious. And last night's episode, "Pandemonium," the season 3 finale, was heartbreaking and heartwarming, too. But more heartbreaking. 😭
2For almost a year and a half in the late '90s, I was a municipal reporter who covered West Windsor Township and the West Windsor–Plainsboro Regional School District for a twice-weekly newspaper based in Princeton, New Jersey.
3I'm also a huge fan of RuPaul's Drag Race. I picked it up at season 2 (and later caught up on season 1), and when I started dating Tony, he began watching it with me a few episodes into season 2 and immediately got hooked. Like many fans, I hated season 1 of All Stars—which, I must point out, should be hyphenated—because it required the queens to compete in teams and not shine individually. And I'm still bitter about the outcome of the third season of All Stars. #shangelawasrobbed Maybe All Stars is going to be like the original Star Trek films and only the even-numbered ones will be worth watching. 😜 I really enjoyed season 2 of All Stars, though bringing back two of Alaska's drag besties was an obvious way to make her inevitable path to the crown that much easier. My favorite seasons of the regular version of the show are 5, featuring Jinkx Monsoon, perhaps the most-multitalented queen of all time, and season 3, with its incredibly strong top three: Raja, Manila Luzon (who's also back in RPDR AS 4), and Alexis Mateo.
4I voted yes on Amendment 4 in November. To me, it was an issue of basic fairness—of not further punishing people for a crime in their past.
5LGBT is used throughout the story even though LGBTQ was used in the subhead. The Q can stand for either queer or questioning. It seems to me that non-binary is becoming the more widely used term for gender queer or bigender, which you'll see defined in the first linked article in this footnote.