22 United States The EconomistOctober 26th 2019
2 demeanours”, but their contours are clear.
Senate rules, last updated in 1986, require
the body to summon the president after the
House impeaches him. Select members of
the House of Representatives—dubbed
“House managers”—prosecute their case.
The president presents a defence. Senators
may not question anyone directly. They are
“commanded” at the outset of the trial by
the sergeant-at-arms to “keep silence, on
pain of imprisonment”. But if they have
questions—senators had more than 150
during Mr Clinton’s trial—they can jot
them down and pass them to the chief jus-
tice, who will read them aloud. After
closed-door deliberations, cameras roll
again for the final public vote on each im-
peachment article.
An impeachment trial has several trap-
pings of a court trial: lawyers, evidence, ju-
rors, verdict. But the proceedings and judg-
ment are fundamentally political. A
removed official has no appeal. And there
are no set rules of evidence, no due-process
requirement and of course no gag rule for
jurors—senators must stay mum inside the
chamber but can talk freely to the press.
Michael Gerhardt, a law professor at the
University of North Carolina who testified
at the Clinton impeachment, says that Re-
publicans could change the rules by major-
ity vote. Democrats could try to filibuster
any change, but the filibuster could itself
be nixed by a simple majority. Yet there
may be little need for Mr McConnell to re-
sort to that. Instead he could choose to lim-
it the witnesses or evidence Democrats
could introduce; allow Mr Trump “to assert
privilege to prevent anything from being
disclosed that the president does not wish
to be disclosed”; or “impose a tougher bur-
den of proof”—like the criminal standard
of “beyond a reasonable doubt”—to tip the
balance in Mr Trump’s favour.
Mr McConnell has time to consider his
options while the House, led by Speaker
Nancy Pelosi, continues its run-up to im-
peachment. A growing number of Ameri-
cans think that Congress is right to im-
peach Mr Trump. But only a small number
of Republicans have changed their minds.
Instead, more voters who already disap-
proved of Mr Trump have come round to
the idea (see chart).
As long as Mr Trump’s fans remain loy-
al, Mr Bowman muses that Republicans
could turn a trial into a “circus” airing “ev-
ery crazy conspiracy theory”, including
“unfounded allegations about Mr Biden
and his son”. In a bad sign, on October 23rd
two dozen Republican congressmen led by
Steve Scalise, the minority whip from Loui-
siana, stormed the House proceedings. But
if the president’s popularity should start to
decline rapidly, Mr McConnell could in-
stead shorten the trial to limit the damage
and shore up senators facing re-election
next year in swing states. 7I
n america’shierarchy of elections, the
presidentials sit squarely at the top,
drawing the most voters and interest. Next
are the mid-terms. Off-year elections come
last. On November 5th, three states will
choose governors, two others will elect
state legislators and some districts will
elect mayors or replacement congressmen.
In most of America, a tiny share of the elec-
torate will trudge dutifully to the polls to
choose school-board officials and vote on
ballot or tax questions. But Marq Mitchell,
a 29-year-old Floridian, can barely contain
his glee about this autumn’s election—it
will mark the first time he votes.
Mr Mitchell grew up a ward of the state;
his father was absent, his mother addicted
and his grandmother died when he was in
his early teens. By the age of 22 he had two
felony convictions, one for trying to escape
from a juvenile-detention centre, the other
for fighting. But he eventually found his
feet. After spending several years in a series
of mundane jobs he cashed in his savings
to start Chainless Change, a charity to help
ex-felons adjust to civilian life.
Yet as admirable as Mr Mitchell’s life has
been recently, under Florida law he was in-
eligible to vote. Florida permanently disen-
franchised felons—which just three other
states do—from its constitution of 1868 un-
til last year, when voters overwhelmingly
approved a constitutional amendment re-
storing the voting rights of ex-felons, otherthan those convicted of murder and sexual
offences. But earlier this year, Florida’s leg-
islature passed a law that, depending on
your view, either clarified or, in effect, in-
validated this change. It stated that felons
must pay all fines, fees and restitution be-
fore they can vote.
That may sound reasonable enough. If
you embezzled money from your employ-
er, your sentence should include restitu-
tion. But jurisdictions in Florida impose a
dizzying array of fees on convicts designed
to raise revenue for the state: a $50 “appli-
cation fee” for a public defender, $100 each
for the public defender and the prosecu-
tor’s “costs”, and various crime-specific
surcharges. These can quickly add up—
particularly for poor felons. When they
cannot pay, collection agents step in; they
can assess additional fines of up to 40% of
the amount owed.
Jurisdictions often do not communi-
cate with each other, or those whom they
fine. Mr Mitchell found out he owed
$4,000 only when he applied for an occu-
pational licence. And many ex-felons owe
more than they can ever repay. Karen
Leicht, for instance, served 30 months in
prison for her part, which she says was un-
witting, in a fraud scheme. She pleaded
guilty and helped the prosecution, but she
still owes $59m in restitution.
The amendment itself did not mention
financial restitution; it simply stated that
“any disqualification from voting arising
from a felony conviction shall termina-
te...upon completion of all terms of sen-
tence including parole or probation.” But
Jeff Brandes, a Republican senator, argued
that to enact the law, “we needed to define
what ‘all terms’ meant.”
He points to a letter written by the
American Civil Liberties Union, a watch-
dog, and other backers of the change, ac-
knowledging that “all terms...includes any
period of incarceration, probation, parole
and financial obligations imposed as part
of an individual’s sentence.” He also notes
that in oral arguments in 2017, a lawyer in
favour of the amendment agreed when a
judge asked if all terms “would also include
the payment of any fines.”
The amendment’s backers sued, argu-
ing that the new law amounted to a poll tax,
which is unconstitutional. On October 18th
a federal court in Tallahassee enjoined
Florida from imposing the law against the
17 plaintiffs named in the case, including
Mr Mitchell. The ruling did not reach a final
decision on the law’s constitutionality;
that is for another federal court to decide,
in a trial scheduled to start in April 2020.
The legislature may soften the law before
then; the ruling noted that “plaintiffs have
a constitutional right to vote so long as the
state’s only reason for denying the vote is
failure to pay an amount the plaintiff is
genuinely unable to pay.” 7FORT LAUDERDALE
Florida’s ex-felons win an important
but limited victoryConvicts’ voting rightsFined out