FDLE urged 'pull the plug' on voter purge

By CHRIS DAVIS and MATTHEW DOIG  Southwest Florida Herald Tribune  16 October 2004

STAFF WRITERS

chris.davis@heraldtribune.com
matthew.doig@heraldtribune.com

Several days before the state's felon voter list was sent to county elections offices across Florida, state officials expressed doubts about its reliability.

The doubts were serious enough that Gov. Jeb Bush was advised to "pull the plug" on the entire project, according to an e-mail written by a state computer expert and obtained by the Herald-Tribune.

Bush refused the request, the e-mail said, and told the Department of State to proceed with the purge of nearly 48,000 voters.

Two months later, after flaws in the list were exposed in the press, the state abandoned the effort to purge voters on the list. Those flaws were revealed after Secretary of State Glenda Hood lost a court battle to keep the list hidden from the public.

Bush said Friday that he was never warned about any problems before the list was released.

But his denial contradicts a May 4, 2004, e-mail in which Florida Department of Law Enforcement computer expert Jeff Long describes how election officials told Bush the list needed to be abandoned.

"Paul Craft called today and told me that yesterday they recommended to the Gov that they 'pull the plug,'" on the voter database, Long wrote in an e-mail to his boss, Donna Uzzell.

Long added that state election officials "weren't comfortable with the felon matching program they've got."

"The Gov rejected their suggestion to pull the plug, so they're 'going live' with it this weekend," Long wrote.

Long was recounting a conversation he had earlier that day with Craft, the Department of State's top computer expert and the point man on the felon purge list.

Long's primary responsibility was to provide Craft with his department's database of convicted felons.

Friday, Long confirmed the contents of the e-mail, saying that he didn't remember the specifics, but Craft told him about the meeting with Bush.

"I think Paul was saying he was experiencing some difficulties with" the felon list, Long said.

But the governor wanted state elections officials to fix the problems and get the list released, Long said.

"The governor's office, I think, was wanting to move forward anyway with making it right," he said.

Craft oversaw the process of matching the felon data with voter registration rolls to create the felon purge list. Florida is one of a handful of states that prohibit convicted felons from voting.

Democrats and civil rights groups, wary of the purge list from the beginning, blasted Bush because Democrats outnumbered Republicans on the list 3-to-1 and nearly half the list was made up of black voters.

They also noted that Hood had spent more than $100,000 in legal fees fighting to keep the list secret.

After a judge made the purge list public in July, the Herald-Tribune reported that only 61 Hispanics, who tend to vote Republican in Florida, were on the list.

Subsequent reports revealed that the FDLE data did not include Hispanic as one of the race categories, virtually assuring that Hispanic felons would not be matched to Hispanic voters.

So far, Hood's office has characterized the flaws as honest mistakes.

But Ralph Neas, president of People for the American Way, said Long's e-mail shows that Bush was responsible for the creation of a flawed list that could help his brother win the presidential election.

"This isn't functionaries making decisions below the governor. This is the governor directly overruling the recommendations of state employees," said Neas, whose group serves as the legal arm of the NAACP. "This shows a direct, personal involvement of the governor in the decisions of state employees directly related to the conduct of elections. It is nothing short of astonishing."

In a written statement, Hood spokeswoman Alia Faraj said, "Paul Craft has never recommended anything to the governor about the central voter database."

But Faraj didn't address whether other state department officials asked Bush to scrap the project on May 3.

It is not clear from the e-mail if the Hispanic flaw was among the problems that led election officials to consider ending the list before it was created.

Faraj said Long was referring to other technical issues that were later resolved, not the Hispanic flaw.

Long said he could not recall what specific problems Craft cited as reasons the list should be scrapped. He also said he could not characterize Craft's level of concern over Bush's decision to push ahead with the list.

Craft hung up on a reporter seeking comment Friday.

In the e-mail, however, Long wrote that the governor's decision forced FDLE and election officials to complete last-minute work that had not been started.

"They'll be putting on 4 training workshops around the state, starting Monday here in Tallahassee … none of which has been scheduled, noticed, or sites arranged for as of yet!!" Long wrote. "Needless to say, Paul's going NUTS!"

The e-mail was among more than 1,000 pages of FDLE documents on the felon voter purge obtained by the Herald-Tribune under Florida's public records law.

Long's e-mail cites two problems that election officials had with their list.

Department of State officials had discovered some unanticipated problems with the FDLE database of felons. In addition, they didn't know how to deal with conditional clemency, a process that restores voting rights if a felon fulfills certain requirements, such as drug treatment.

U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Boca Raton, called the e-mail a "smoking gun" that ties Gov. Bush to the flawed effort to purge felons.

"This governor has overseen the most biased, the most unfair election effort in modern Florida history," Wexler said. "He's essentially trying to rig the election for George Bush."

Wexler said the revelation of Bush's involvement in decisions about the purge list underscores the need for an internal investigation into how the list was created.

He called on state Attorney General Charlie Crist to investigate.

A Herald-Tribune reporter gave Bush a copy of the e-mail at a press conference Friday in Punta Gorda. In a brief interview afterward, Bush denied that any meeting took place May 3 with Craft or other election officials.

"He didn't call me," Bush said of Craft. "Once it became clear after talking to the secretary of state that there were problems with the list (in July), that's when we decided to end it."

So far, the only review of the purge list project is being conducted by Hood's inspector general.

That investigation has been going on for more than three months with no published findings. Under state public records law, records generated from such investigations become public after 60 days.

But Department of State officials have not turned over any documents from the investigation despite repeated requests from the Herald-Tribune.

"The Florida Department of State is processing the Sarasota Herald-Tribune's requests plural," Faraj said. "We'll get them to you as soon as we're at that point."

Faraj told the Herald-Tribune last week that Kirby Mole, Hood's inspector general, had not finished his review. She said she had no idea whether it would be completed before the November election. Faraj said it would be inappropriate for Mole to talk with the press.

In addition, the Herald-Tribune has received no response to repeated requests to interview Hood.