CNN —
No one may have been more surprised by the decisive moment in last week’s first GOP presidential debate than Desmond Meade.
Meade is executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, which works to restore voting rights in the state to former felons. Florida has long been one of the states that have made it most difficult for former felons to recover the ability to vote. In 2018, the coalition led a successful effort to pass a constitutional amendment to make it easier for those residents to regain that right.
Ron DeSantis, then a candidate for Florida governor, opposed that amendment when it appeared on