Felon voting rights face a new hurdle

Hundreds of Floridians who have voted for years could be stopped because they didn't re-register they hadn't been told.

BY DAVID KIDWELL, JASON GROTTO AND ERIKA BOLSTAD

dkidwell@herald.com

 

More than 1,600 Florida felons whose right to vote was legally restored remain on a state list of potentially ineligible voters because they have yet to re-register to vote, a hurdle that critics say is sure to create confusion as the national election looms.

State officials have directed county election supervisors to make each of the voters some of whom have been voting legally for decades register again before the November presidential election.

The move is drawing fire from several fronts from local election supervisors forced to deal with the bureaucratic morass, from black politicians who believe that the list unfairly targets minorities, and from voting rights activists who say it skirts the spirit of open voting.

''It's a throwback to a very ugly period in American history a time when state officials in the deep South threw up irrelevant stumbling blocks to keep black people from voting,'' said Randall Marshall, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida.

But administrators of the Florida Division of Elections, in the midst of a controversial effort to remove ineligible voters from Florida's rolls, argue that they are following state law.

''Florida law requires that a felon must register to vote after being granted clemency in order for that registration to be valid,'' Secretary of State Glenda Hood said in a news release issued Friday.

Hood's remarks came in response to a Herald report Friday that revealed that at least 2,119 voters on the state's list of potentially ineligible voters had received clemency after their convictions and appear entitled to vote. Black Democrats make up the largest portion of the list, The Herald found.

Hood and her staff spent much of Friday attempting to discredit the story as inaccurate. They did not respond to repeated telephone inquiries and a list of questions e-mailed by the newspaper.

State election officials have come under intense criticism over efforts to purge voter rolls since the 2000 presidential election, when Florida turned the entire presidential race for Republican Gov. Jeb Bush's brother George by the slimmest of historical margins 537 votes.

In interviews Thursday, state election administrators offered no explanation of why the 2,119 voters whose rights were restored were included on the list of voters to be removed from the rolls.

But a Herald analysis shows that 1,647 of those 2,119 received their clemency after they registered to vote, some as far back as 1952. Several of the voters interviewed by The Herald said they have been voting for years, and were not aware that they had to go through the paperwork again or be barred from voting.

Their names have been flagged in the state's felon voter database with the coding ''CAR'' Clemency After Registration. Election supervisors have been told in training seminars that each of them ``must re-register.''

Of the 1,647, nearly a third 497 legally registered to vote before committing their crimes, then won clemency afterward. Now they face the loss of that right.

The state's list includes people like Denise Baxter of Oakland Park, who was registered to vote in 1980, five years before her felony conviction for welfare fraud.

Baxter, now 44, won clemency and has voted repeatedly for years, most recently in the 2000 presidential election.

Because of her felony conviction, Baxter, who cleans rooms at a Ramada Inn, has never been able to qualify for better-paying work. Even so, she never thought her record would keep her from voting.

''I really do want to vote,'' said Baxter, a Democrat.

U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami, said he was outraged at The Herald's findings.

''What they are doing here is illegal, and it goes beyond a simple voting rights issue,'' he said. ``It shows a complete lack of respect for individual rights. They're making people do this, hoping they won't have time. This reminds me of the Jim Crow laws of the 1950s and 1960s in Mississippi. It just sickens me.''

Several county election supervisors interviewed Friday said they have similar concerns, and are leaning toward ignoring state requirements to investigate and remove felons who received clemency after convictions.

''I don't think it's right. It's not fair, and the timing is terrible,'' said Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore. ``If they were going to do this, they should have done it a long time ago or waited until after the election. Frankly, by the time we verify it all and get the letters out, it would probably be too late for the voters to do anything about it.''

Broward Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes said she, too, is leaning toward ignoring the requirement.

''If they were registered and got clemency, to me, if you take them off, you just put them back on,'' she said. ``It just seems like a lot of double work, and we don't have time for double work.''

Said Kurt Browning, Pasco County's election chief: ``It's paperwork. It really makes me look like a fool, a typical bureaucrat. All I want to do is the right thing, and then I'm caught in this which-came-first, chicken-or-egg situation. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't.''

Civil rights lawyers said a 1960 federal law prohibiting government officials from disqualifying voters over paperwork mistakes or other procedural barriers supersedes the state law invoked by the Division of Elections.

''It doesn't matter whether the mistake is the fault of the government or the voter,'' said Neil Bradley, associate director of the ACLU's voting rights division in Atlanta. ``You can't force people to jump through procedural hoops because of a processing error.''