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Choicepoint purged voters from voting lists { May 7 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/05/07/State/System_to_clean_up_vo.shtmlhttp://www.sptimes.com/2004/05/07/State/System_to_clean_up_vo.shtml
Election 2004
System to clean up voting lists
State officials say a new database will provide a more accurate list of felons and reduce errors.
By TOM ZUCCO, Times Staff Writer
Published May 7, 2004
Up to 40,000 Floridians could be removed from voting rolls when the state next week sends each of Florida's 67 counties a list of felons to be purged.
Officials with the state Division of Elections say their new computer database will provide a more accurate list of felons and reduce errors like those that created controversy during the close 2000 presidential election.
That year, the state used a felon database compiled by an Atlanta company, DBT/ChoicePoint, which critics said was too broad and disenfranchised people who rightfully could vote.
Florida's new database was created in the wake of a 2001 lawsuit by the NAACP, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups that challenged the validity of the felon list, and a new state law that prohibited private companies from compiling the list.
Now the state is relying on information from circuit courts, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the clemency board that restores felons' voting rights.
With the old list, "Someone might be arrested and give them (police) another person's name. Or an alias. And we were expected to match them up," said Pasco County Elections Supervisor Kurt Browning. "It was like trying to land a jumbo jet on a driveway. They were using such a broad net, picking up people they had no business picking up. But since then, they've put additional filters on the list to make it more accurate.
"Hopefully, we'll get it right this time."
But Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, said he isn't so sure.
"This is the opening battle over whether we'll have problems with the election in Florida this year," Simon said. He said he is concerned the state data might not accurately reflect charges that don't result in a conviction, or those that end up as misdemeanor pleas, or the withholding of adjudication.
"Unless the match is based on confirmed records of a disposition of a felony conviction, there are going to be high error rates like we saw in 2000," Simon said.
Florida is among a handful of states that does not automatically restore voting rights of convicted felons once they leave prison. After felons complete their sentences and probation, they must apply to the Board of Clemency to have their voting rights restored.
In 2000, critics said Florida used out-of-state lists and took away felons' voting rights even though they had been restored in the state where the crimes had been committed. Others said they were erroneously purged from the rolls because their name was identical or similar to a felon.
The list also had been the target of those who said politics and race played a role in keeping voters from the polls. State records show that although blacks, who traditionally vote Democratic, make up about 15 percent of the state's population, they make up a disproportionate number of those serving time in state prisons.
As a result of concerns about the process, several election supervisors refused to purge their rolls during the 2000 election based on the state list.
Pinellas Supervisor of Elections Deborah Clark said the criteria for weeding out those ineligible to vote will be more stringent this time.
"In 2000, we were very cautious because we knew there had been errors on the list," Clark said. "We had a couple of people show up who according to FDLE files had not had their rights restored. We didn't allow them to vote. But the FDLE said later they had made a mistake.
"I'm cautiously optimistic" about this year, she said.
"What the state is doing is building a central voter registration database, so all the registration information is going into a central repository run by the state," said Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson.
"If someone was convicted of a felony in Pasco, served their time, got out of jail, and moved to Hillsborough and registered to vote, without a central system, the process of getting information was at best archaic and slow.
"I feel pretty comfortable with what they did."
Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood, who oversees the sate elections office, said the list will be drawn exclusively from Florida arrests. Election supervisors will retrieve the data on a secure site over the Internet, compare names with voter rolls and the clerk of court before they send a registered letter to the voter notifying them they are about to be purged.
If a voter thinks a mistake has been made, he can contact a local elections office to appeal.
"The onus is on the supervisors," Nash said. "The onus in 2000 was on the voter."
Nash said the new list has the approval of the U.S. Department of Justice and the NAACP.
"The new data is owned and operated by the Division of Elections," Nash said. "We're pretty confident the margin of error is very minimal."
[Last modified May 7, 2004, 01:03:18]
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