Lawyers: Media needs names

Ruling expected within a month in suit against state over list of felons

06/30/04
By JACOB OGLES
Daily Commercial Staff Writer
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TALLAHASSEE
In final arguments in a lawsuit against the state, CNN attorneys claim no meaningful inspection of a list of potential felons can be conducted unless a list is provided to media outlets.

“The media’s historic role as a watchdog over government, including the accuracy of elections, is frustrated by the inability to extract information from or copy that list,” the final argument from CNN reads.

The list of some 47,000 potential felons is in the Central Voter Database, which was launched in May. The names on the list have been given to county supervisors of elections to be checked and purged from voter rolls. Florida is among seven states in the nation where convicted felons rights are not restored at the completion of sentence. There are 696 Lake County names and 202 Sumter County names in the database, according to state records.

News outlets, including The Daily Commercial, requested copies of all or parts of the list of potential felons, which reporters plan to independently verify. But while state law allows anybody to look at the list, only certain political bodies, such as candidates and political parties, may have a copy of the list.

CNN filed a lawsuit in May against the Florida Department of State to have that law overturned. The First Amendment Foundation of Florida filed a motion of intervention immediately, and U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson filed a friend-of-court brief on behalf of the news agency. Eight other news agencies have since joined the suit, as has the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

In its arguments, CNN attorneys point out that original legislation for the Central Voter Database allowed copies of information to be made. But a 2001 law rescinded that ability.

In Department of State arguments last week, attorneys defending the law wrote that “Statute merely requires that records to which it applies ‘shall be open for personal inspection by any person.’ ” State officials have also said the release of the list, which included potential felons whose names meet certain criteria, may violate the privacy of those named.

In 2000, state officials contracted a private firm to create a similar list, but there were numerous errors in the 173,142 names. Many supervisors refused to use the list, including Stegall and Sumter County Supervisor of Elections Karen Krauss. But many others did, resulting in hundreds of voters claiming to have been wrongfully denied the right to vote.

President Bush won Florida’s 25 electoral votes by a 537-vote margin over Democrat Al Gore. The state’s electoral delegates were enough to win the national presidential election.

The state response denies that verification of this list would affect whether voters are disenfranchised this year because it is only a potential list, and all names must be verified locally before anybody is actually d from the registration books.

But attorneys for CNN said there is no public benefit to preventing the list from being copied, and it should not considered part of private voter registration information.

“It is entirely unclear exactly how the Division (of Elections) intends to argue that the Suspected Felons List ... suddenly becomes part of the ‘registration books of each county.’ ”

The attorneys also argue that since much of the voter information was available before the database was created in 1997, there is no grandfathered protection of the information from before the state’s Government-in-the-Sunshine law took effect.

Court officials said Judge Nikki Clark will likely make a ruling in the case within the next month.