Counties Pressed To Verify Felon List

By GARRETT THEROLF and DAVID WASSON The Tampa Tribune
Published: Jul 4, 2004

TALLAHASSEE - State elections officials promised Friday that a potentially error-ridden list of 47,763 suspected felons ineligible to vote will be thoroughly investigated before anyone is booted from the rolls.

The job of verifying the list's accuracy is left to each county, many of which have yet to get started even though key election-related deadlines are fast approaching.

Some counties are thinking about hiring consultants to guide them through the controversial process. Others are trying to comb through the spreadsheets on their own.

Spot checks by Tampa Tribune reporters Friday showed dozens of apparent errors in the Bay area.

``Well, it angers me,'' said Gelyn Lambert of Riverview, after learning he was wrongly placed on the list. ``I think it's because I'm listed as a Democrat. I really believe that.''

In southern Hillsborough County, Jose Stajkowski, a safety adviser for construction companies, regained his right to vote in 1989 after a conviction for aggravated battery three years earlier, but he still is listed for possible removal. ``It happens all the time,'' he said.

The list, which contains three times as many Democrats as Republicans, is once again thrusting Florida's election process into the national spotlight.

``With just 123 days until the next election, this potential careless and needless disfranchisement of thousands of voters is extremely disturbing,'' Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe said Friday. ``Florida's list of felons ... needs to be scrapped.''

The primary election is next month; the presidential election is Nov. 2. The first voter registration deadline, a key concern for many felons whose civil rights have been restored, is four weeks away.

``I'm not guaranteeing that we will get all the hearings and the notices done by the primary,'' said Pasco County Elections Supervisor Kurt Browning. ``We are going to methodically go through their names one at a time. I have no idea when that process will be complete.''

Browning said no one in Pasco County will be booted from the rolls until the supervisor is convinced they have lost their eligibility.

Hillsborough County officials are taking their time as well.

``I don't feel the urgency to rush through this process,'' said Hillsborough County Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson, noting the state Clemency Board is still updating its records.

After enduring the five-week election standoff in 2000, county elections officials across Florida are leery of contributing to another fiasco.

Enough questions over the reliability of the suspected felon list already exist.

Those questions were compounded Friday by a Miami Herald analysis suggesting the list errantly includes more than 2,100 eligible voters.

Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood, who oversees the state Division of Elections, disputes the newspaper's conclusion, saying it ``contained factually incorrect information.''

Paul Craft, chief of the division's bureau of voting systems, acknowledged the state's list likely contains errors, but he is convinced the number is nowhere near 2,100.

Craft said there are about 2,100 people on the list who were convicted of new felony crimes after having won restoration of their civil rights for earlier offenses.

The Herald, however, stood by its conclusions Friday.

``I can understand it's embarrassing to them, but it's an accurate, important and solid news story for the people of Florida,'' Manny Garcia, the Herald's metro editor, told The Associated Press. ``We scrubbed [the list] down; we analyzed it and came up with the results.''

Greater scrutiny of the list was made possible this week by a court ruling that overturned a secrecy provision barring the state from publicly disclosing copies of it.

Advocacy groups contend that scrutiny will help fix the kind of errors that contributed to the 2000 election dispute.

Voters at risk of being disenfranchised were grateful for the new levels of review but still worry about how the mistakes occurred in the first place.

Lambert, 51, whose rights were restored in 1998 after an early 1990s conviction for growing marijuana, wonders how many other mistakes have yet to be discovered.

Ronald Budd's name turned up on the list, though state records show he received clemency 29 years ago after convictions for accepting bribes and perjury. Budd said he had confidence that the local supervisors of election would catch the glitch that landed him on the list.

``They'll just go through the process of getting it taken out,'' said Budd, of Ruskin.

Dozens of other individuals who have had their rights restored but still showed up on the purge list were contacted for this article. Most declined to be interviewed.

Florida is one of a handful of states that bars felons from voting until they have successfully petitioned for restoration of their rights.

Statewide, the list contains 28,064 Democrats and 10,197 Republicans. An additional 9,502 belong to minor political parties or list no affiliation.

Elections officials dispute political motives.

Moreover, they stress that the list was intended only to highlight names county officials should closely check before taking action.

``This is a process. It's the beginning of a process,'' Florida State Department spokeswoman Nicole de Lara said. ``These [names] will be researched thoroughly.''

Nonetheless, the list has once again become a rallying cry for Democrats, many of whom say the number of eligible voters improperly purged led to Al Gore's 537-vote loss in Florida in 2000.

State Democratic Party Chairman Scott Maddox said, ``It's unbelievable that after the year 2000 election, here we are four years in and the Jeb Bush administration is preparing another massive purge of the voter rolls.''

Reporters Doug Stanley, Joe Humphrey and Ted Byrd, and researchers Michon Ashmore, Michael Messano, Diane K. Grey and Melanie O'Bannon contributed to this report.