Florida charges 69-year-old woman with vote fraud even after sending her registration card

Civil rights groups are crying foul after a Black 69-year-old Florida woman was charged with committing voter fraud even after the state had sent her a voter registration card.

The Tallahassee Democrat reports that Florida resident Marsha Ervin was charged with illegally voting in two different elections while she was still on parole for a 2016 conviction on charges of aggravated neglect of an elderly person.

However, Ervin says she had every reason to believe that she was eligible to vote given that the state sent her an official registration card.

POLL: Should Trump be allowed to run for office?

As the Tallahassee Democrat notes, the rules around voter eligibility for former felons have proven confusing in recent years because, even though voters in 2018 passed an amendment restoring voting rights to past felons after they had served their prison sentences, the state legislature passed a subsequent law stating that felons needed to meet all of their past legal financial obligations before being eligible to vote again.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who is representing Ervin, said this week that the arrests made for purported "voter fraud" in Florida were all part of an attempt to intimidate Black voters.

"For this to happen to her, what it really tells you [is] it can happen to any of us,” he said.. “This is about instilling fear in people in our community, to say, 'Well, I don't want to get in any trouble, so I'm not going to come and vote.'"