State ceases felon voting purge

Florida asks 14 election supervisors to tell voters they may still be eligible to vote, even if they got a letter saying they were on a list of potential felons.

BY GARY FINEOUT AND MARC CAPUTO Miami Herald   14 August 2004

TALLAHASSEE - In an effort to clean up one of its most notable and damaging messes, the state asked election supervisors Friday to abandon efforts to purge many potential felons from the voting rolls.

Dawn Roberts, director of the Division of Elections, sent a letter to all 67 counties telling them to deny voters the right to cast ballots ``only if you have independently confirmed that the person is a felon who has not had their civil rights restored.''

The letter, released late in the day as a hurricane ravaged the state, follows mediation sessions between the state and the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice, which alleged that Florida violated federal and state voting rights law by using a flawed list of 48,000 potential felons.

Florida is one of only a handful of states that bar ex-prisoners from voting unless they've had their civil rights restored. In early May, Florida sent supervisors the list of potential felons and asked county election offices to begin the process to remove those on the list from the voting rolls.

But ultimately, state officials scrapped the list after news organizations, including The Miami Herald and Sarasota Herald-Tribune, exposed flaws in the list of felons.

The biggest flaw in the state's database: It did not include the names of Hispanic voters, while it included many black voters who had actually had their voting rights restored. Democrats, recalling the 2000 voting mess, cried conspiracy against Republican Gov. Jeb Bush's administration, saying blacks tend to vote Democratic and Hispanics tend to vote Republican.

While most of the state's largest counties never began the process of purging voters, supervisors in 14 counties including Brevard and counties in North Florida such as Gulf and Wakulla sent out letters informing voters they were included on the list. Under state law, voters who fail to respond to county supervisors could be purged from the rolls.

On Friday, Roberts sent out a detailed list of instructions to the 14 counties that sent out letters, reminding them that the state has scrapped the list.

Roberts also suggested that even if voters fail to respond to the election supervisors' letters, they should remain on the voting rolls. Even if voters have told election officials that they are felons, Roberts still suggests that election supervisors rely on a ''visual inspection'' of court records and confirmation from the state clemency office that their civil rights have not been restored.

While election supervisors remain independently elected officials, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood said state officials hope supervisors will follow the letter.

''Our goal is to provide them with clear guidelines in an effort to help supervisors of elections ensure that every eligible voter can participate in the process,'' said department spokeswoman Alia Faraj.

The Bush administration said the earlier errors were innocent mistakes.

Jessie Allen, associate general counsel for the Brennan Center, praised state officials for the new letter, although she said the organization was disappointed that the letter did not point out strongly why the initial felons list was flawed.