State scraps controversial voting list of potential felons

Associated Press

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. - Florida elections officials said Saturday a list of people believed to be convicted felons would not be used to bar them from voting this year.

The decision was made after it was reported that the list contained few people identified as Hispanics because of a flaw in how it was compiled. Of the nearly 48,000 people on the list created by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, only 61 were classified as Hispanics.

That was because when voters register in Florida, they can identify themselves as Hispanic. But the FDLE potential felons database has no Hispanic category, which excludes many people from the list if they put that as their race.

The problem was unintentional, said Nicole de Lara, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood.

"Nevertheless, Supervisors of Elections are required to uphold their constitutional obligation and will continue to work with Clerks of the Court to ensure that ineligible felons are removed from the rolls, a process that has always been a part of their due diligence," Hood said in a statement.

Elections supervisors in Florida's 67 counties had begun reviewing the list of 47,763 potential felons identified by the FDLE in May. Some supervisors have expressed concern over the accuracy of the list and have said they would verify each name before removing someone from the voting rolls.

The purge of felons from voter rolls has been a thorny issue since the 2000 presidential election. A private company hired to identify ineligible voters before the election produced a list with scores of errors and elections supervisors used it to remove voters without verifying its accuracy. A federal lawsuit led to an agreement to restore rights to thousands of voters.

Florida is one of only a handful of states that does not automatically restore voting rights to convicted felons once they've completed their sentence.