Do y’all remember Marsha Ervin? She’s the Florida Black who was released from prison in 2018 and charged with voter fraud after she voted in the 2020 presidential election and the 2022 primary election.
Why was she charged? Based on a new state law that was passed in November 2018, Amendment Four, Ervin assumed that she could vote after she completed her full prison sentence. But she did not know that in 2019, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that would lengthen the time it would take for convicted felons to gain their voting rights back.
Specifically, Amendment Four says that people with past felony convictions can get their full right to vote back after they complete their full sentence, which does not include people convicted of murder or sex crimes. The bill DeSantis signed would only restore a felon’s voter rights after the person paid all the fines and fees that came with their felony conviction.
This is information that Ervin was confused about, but local authorities did not care, and she was arrested and charged with submission of false voter registration and two felony counts of voting as an unqualified elector. If she was found guilty, she would’ve faced up to five years in prison.
But after fighting the charges with the help of civil rights attorney Ben Crump and the Tallahassee NAACP, prosecutors have dropped the charges against the 69-year-old Black woman, according to CNN.
On Tuesday, Florida State Attorney Jack Campbell wrote in a filing, “There is no witness who can testify to the defendant being told that she was ineligible to vote and some evidence to corroborate her assertions that she believed she could lawfully vote.”
This was such a high-profile case because it represented an issue that many voters were struggling with. Many liberal leaders have said that conservative lawmakers put these laws in place to cause confusion among Black voters and intimidate felons who want to vote after their sentence is complete.