Florida voting-rights advocates cheered the passage Tuesday of Amendment 4, which removes restrictions that most felons in the state face in regaining their right to vote.
The question, which drew the most votes of any of the 12 amendments on the crowded Florida ballot, was approved by 64 percent of the voters; the threshold for passage was 60 percent.
But the advocates for Amendment 4 face a new challenge: letting felons long disconnected from politics and government know that they can register to vote.
"It needs to be a statewide and a local effort," said Cecile Scoon, a civil rights attorney and the first vice president of the League of Women Voters of Florida, one of Amendment 4's main supporters. "The plan should be to find them, educate them, help them and register them."
Estimates of the number of people who could regain the right to vote range from 1.1 million to 1.4 million.
In this election alone, Florida races for U.S. Senate, governor and agriculture commissioner are so close they will trigger mandatory recounts. Many local races are decided by even smaller margins.
Adding up to 1 million voters could change the shape of Florida elections far into the future.
"It's a game-changer here in the state of Florida," said Democratic state Sen. Bobby Powell. "That number of voters who are not eligible to vote is definitely enough to change the outcome in some of those races."
Florida is one of only three states that bar felons from voting until they act to have their voting rights restored.
In 7 { years, Gov. Rick Scott slowed the process significantly, restoring the voting rights to far fewer felons than his predecessors. In approving just 3,088 cases, Scott restored the rights to a smaller percentage of blacks and a larger percentage of Republicans than his predecessors.
In Florida and elsewhere, minorities are over-represented in state prisons, and minorities tend to support Democrats.
The amendment to the Florida Constitution was written to avoid delays from a recalcitrant Legislature.
Legislators created rules that lessened the impact of voter-initiated constitutional changes, such as one limiting the number of students in public school classrooms. More recently, the Legislature decreed that a medical marijuana initiative did not include the right to smoke the drug.
At 64 percent, Amendment 4 attracted the eighth-highest percentage of votes among the 12 amendments. It collected more votes than any other, topping Amendment 11, a constitutional cleanup, by 440,000 votes. It also got 226,000 more votes than the most popular choice, Amendment 12, which tightened lobbying rules for lawmakers and drew nearly 79 percent approval.
Under rules adopted by Scott, felons must complete their sentence, pay all fines and wait five to seven years before they can apply to have their voting rights restored.
Amendment 4 will change those rules, allowing some felons _ those not convicted of murder or a sex crime _ to be eligible to register immediately.
Scoon said she and other Amendment 4 supporters don't like to say the amendment "automatically" restores felon voting rights because that leaves the false impression that felons don't have to do anything.
They do. They must register to vote _ just like every other would-be voter.
