CNN
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While Florida generally makes it challenging for people in the state with felony convictions to regain their voting rights, former President Donald Trump had no problem voting for himself Tuesday in Palm Beach.

Trump was convicted in Manhattan earlier this year of 34 charges of falsifying corporate records related to hush money payments before the 2016 election to adult film star Stormy Daniels. The first former US president to be convicted of a crime, Trump is expected to be sentenced on November 26.

Under Florida law, if a voter has an out-of-state conviction, Florida will be subject to that state’s laws on how a felon can regain his or her right to vote.

For Trump, that means he will take advantage of a 2021 New York law that allows people with felony convictions to vote as long as they are not serving prison time at the time of the election.

For other Floridians with felony convictions, the rules are not so simple.

“Florida is really behind on its laws,” said Blair Bowie, director of the Campaign Legal Center’s Restore Your Vote project, which focuses on ending felony disenfranchisement.

A successful 2018 ballot initiative that restored voting rights to those who had served the terms of their sentences was defeated by Republican state lawmakers. They passed a law requiring all fines and fees associated with a conviction to be paid – a process that can be cumbersome because there is no centralized system to track such outstanding fees.

The Republican measure that added a requirement that all fines and fees be paid was challenged in court, but a conservative appeals court ultimately upheld the law. Yet the lawsuit has exposed how records of these outstanding debts are maintained at the provincial level and are often incomplete.

But Trump does not have to contend with that bureaucratic quagmire, because he has been convicted in New York.

“The bottom line is that it should be this easy for everyone, not just Trump,” Bowie said.

This story has been updated with additional developments.