Who's on the list?

By Nancy Cook Lauer

DEMOCRAT CAPITOL BUREAU CHIEF

Sam Heyward has voted in almost every election for the past decade or so. But according to the Florida Division of Elections, he's a possible felon who should be struck from the voter rolls.

Heyward appears on an infamous list - a list of 47,687 that is drawing national attention after possibly thousands of eligible voters like him were turned away from the polls in the election that gave George W. Bush the presidency.

Some may have been purged from the voter rolls because of mishandled paperwork or a typing mistake. Some may have been law-abiding citizens who just had the same name as a criminal.

Now that the state has issued another list of people at risk of being taken off the voter rolls, two documents are very important to Heyward: his tattered, blue voter-identification card and a freshly photocopied 1986 clemency form that gave him his right to vote.

The 45-year-old Tallahassee man admits he made a mistake when he was 22, buying furniture that he knew was stolen. His 1981 felony conviction landed him in a work camp for about a year, and then he pulled his life back together.

A Godby High School graduate, Heyward served two years overseas in the Army, then worked locally for Coca-Cola for 13 years. After falling ill and losing a leg, he started first as a volunteer then as a paid employee at Bethel AME Church, where he had been a lifelong member.

His record isn't spotless. He bounced a few checks, let his tags lapse and was caught speeding a couple of times. But the check charges against him were ped, and none of the offenses rose to a level that would affect his voting rights.

It wasn't easy for Heyward to come forward with his story, but he thinks it's important:

"How many other names of people in the state are on that list, and they don't even know they're on the list or what to do to get their names cleared?"

Heyward said he was shocked when City Commissioner Andrew Gillum contacted him to let him know he was on the list. Gillum was able to get a copy from the Division of Elections because he's an elected official.

"I am most concerned about my constituents and whether the people on that list are felons and whether in fact they should be on the list," Gillum said.

The law allows individuals to view the list as long as they don't take notes or copy it. Copies can be given only to political candidates, political parties, political committees and public officials. Those allowed to get the list must sign an oath saying they will use it only to conduct political campaigns or serve constituents.

The People for the American Way Foundation, after trying unsuccessfully to get the statewide list so it could help voters prove their eligibility, is helping Gillum sort through Leon County's list of 820.

Sharon Lettman-Pacheco, of the People for the American Way Foundation, says it shouldn't be up to her organization to do the state's job. But she wants to help people who are in danger of losing their rights navigate through the cumbersome process.

On Friday,Gillum sent Gov. Jeb Bush a letter asking him to make the list public so civil-rights organizations can help time-strapped election supervisors verify the names on the list. He also says the Leon County list is disproportionately black, at 71.7 percent of the total.

Bush spokeswoman Alia Faraj said she hasn't seen the letter but remains confident that election officials will remove only ineligible voters from the rolls.

"This is the list that the Department of State and the supervisors of elections are going through to ensure that every eligible voter will be able to cast their vote, and ineligible voters who shouldn't be voting aren't," Faraj said.

Gillum also asked the governor to send a signal to the state's independently elected supervisors that they shouldn't purge anyone until they have verified the status of everyone on the list.

Lengthy investigations

The law implementing the purge procedures doesn't give the supervisors a deadline to examine the list.

Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho said he won't take one name off the list until he's conducted a thorough review, which won't be finished until after the Aug. 31 primary at the earliest. The lengthy investigations may not even be done in time for the Nov. 2 general election.

If election supervisors can't find proof that a person on the list is an eligible voter, they're required to send the person a registered letter. If the letter is undeliverable or there's no response after 30 days, the supervisors must publish the name in the newspaper. After that, the name must be removed from the rolls.

Sam Heyward hasn't gotten such a letter.

The new rules leave people on the list until they've been deemed ineligible by local election supervisors. In 2000, voters were removed based on a computer analysis done by a private firm. It's not known how many people were mistakenly barred from voting because of that process.

On the state's list of 694 supposed Leon County felons to be taken off the voter rolls for that election, Sancho's office could verify that only 34 were actually felons ineligible to vote. Five counties - including Palm Beach, Broward and Duval, three of the state's largest - refused to use the list at all.

The NAACP and other civil-rights groups sued election officials, citing the purge list and other factors that they said denied blacks their voting rights. The lawsuit was settled in 2002, with the state agreeing to restore voters who were improperly removed, implement more stringent criteria for verifying names on future purge lists and create a new position to monitor Florida's compliance with the National Voter Registration Act.

"We're confident with all the checks and balances in place," said Jenny Nash, spokeswoman for the state Division of Elections, "that the error rate is going to be kept at an absolute minimum."

Sam Heyward hopes so.