Hood denies voter purge list has errors

By Nancy Cook Lauer

DEMOCRAT CAPITOL BUREAU CHIEF

In the face of national publicity over a list of possible felons who could lose the right to vote, Secretary of State Glenda Hood on Tuesday reiterated the steps being taken to ensure no one is struck from the voter rolls in error.

Hood denies that the list has errors, instead emphasizing that compiling the list of 47,763 names is only the first step in the process.

Now it falls upon independently elected county election officials to verify that the people on their lists are felons before purging them, she said.

Those officials have been instructed to check with the courts for criminal records and to send registered letters to those on the list. If the letters are undeliverable, an ad is to be put in a local newspaper noting that a hearing has been scheduled.

A May 5 memo from Hood's office says election supervisors "must" remove voters from the rolls even if they're not found and given the chance to prove they're eligible to vote. State law says supervisors face first-degree misdemeanor charges if they willfully neglect their duties.

But Dawn Roberts, director of the state Division of Elections, said Tuesday that her office has no legal authority to compel county officials to remove names.

Furthermore, there's no specific deadline for the election supervisors to complete the process of going through the list. It's expected that many counties won't get through the list in time for the Aug. 31 primary and perhaps not for the Nov. 2 general election.

"If the Legislature had wanted to put in a time frame and a deadline, it could have," Roberts said.

Newspapers and other media across the country carried headlines over the weekend that the latest election controversy could "threaten" Gov. Jeb Bush because it brings back memories of the 2000 election and could become a rallying cry in the Democrats' attempt to beat President George W. Bush in November.

Roberts said the new process is "a positive step in changing the law since 2000."

Perhaps thousands of eligible voters were struck from the rolls in 2000 because a faulty list was used and the process was more automatic than this year.

But election officials' assurances were little comfort to civil-rights groups calling for the state to dispense with voter purges until it can get it right.

"Instead of taking responsibility for a list that could cause an Election Day disaster, the Division of Elections is shifting accountability and leaving Florida voters in the dark," said Sharon Lettman-Pacheco, national director of the People for the American Way's Election Protection Program.