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2004 florida vote purge questions Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040703/NEWS/407030575/1060http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040703/NEWS/407030575/1060
Article published Jul 3, 2004
Florida's felons list generates worries
Elections officials say they'll be careful with the voter purge; critics wonder.
By Chris Davis, Matthew Doig and LLOYD DUNKELBERGER NYT REGIONAL NEWSPAPERS
TALLAHASSEE -- If everything works as it is supposed to, Daniel Dolan will be able to vote this November.
The 76-year-old Sarasota resident is one of 47,763 people the Florida Division of Elections wants investigated because they may have committed a crime and lost the right to vote.
But Dolan says he should- n't be on the list, because his voting rights were restored in the mid-1950s.
About 50 years ago, Daniel Dolan was convicted of breaking into a drive-in theater in Tarpon Springs. The Republican served his prison time, and a few years later he argued successfully to have his voting rights restored, he said.
"I've had exceptional behavior since then," he said. "In fact, the first points I have ever had taken off my license was last year. I never even ran a red light."
Dolan said the state sent an investigator to check him out before restoring his voting rights.
"I've been voting ever since that day," he said. "I vote in every election, local elections, primaries, general elections. I just don't miss."
Dolan said he doesn't know what he'll do if the supervisor of elections tries to take away his voting rights. After 50 years, he's not sure he can find the papers that prove he had his voting rights restored.
"I don't understand, because I got a pardon," he said. "Somebody should have a record of it. I shouldn't have to go digging around."
Whether or not Dolan gets to vote in November will depend on Kathy Dent, Sarasota County's supervisor of elections.
She said Friday that she can guarantee no one will be purged from the list of registered voters who isn't legally supposed to be purged.
"Unless I have 100 percent proof that someone is a felon, they won't be removed from the list," Dent said. "I will always err on the side of caution."
Elections supervisors in Charlotte and Manatee counties offer similar assurances that innocent people, or people who committed crimes and later had their rights restored, won't be told they can't vote.
Southwest Florida elections offices haven't gotten far on the voter purge. So far, they haven't determined if anyone on the list is a valid voter or not.
In Charlotte County, that may not be determined until after the November election.
"For this to be done properly, it's very time-consuming," said Judy Anderson, Charlotte County supervisor of elections. "Don't expect this to be done before the election."
That's the sentiment of many elections supervisors, who say they are going to focus on making sure people aren't wrongly purged instead of on getting the purge done in time for elections.
Manatee County elections supervisor Bob Sweat said early work on the list shows that matching the names of felons with registered voters is not an exact science.
People who get arrested sometimes use the Social Security number, address or birth date of a family member, Sweat said.
"I'm amazed at how many people have the same birthday, and not only the same birth date, but the same birth year," he said. "I've run across alias after alias after alias."
The state sent out a list of potential felons who show up as registered Florida voters. But the state didn't pare down its list by using a list of people who received executive clemency from the governor and Cabinet.
Getting clemency restores a convict's right to vote in Florida, one of the few states that bans felons from voting for life.
The list contains the same kinds of errors as the voter purge list used during the 2000 election, in which thousands of voters, mostly black Democrats, were improperly purged.
It also appears to disproportionately represent more Democrats and black voters than the state's population and voting registration would suggest.
Fifty-nine percent of the 47,763 felons are Democrats, compared with 43 percent of the state's registered voters. Republicans, who make up 38 percent of the state's registration, accounted for 20 percent of the voters on the list.
Blacks account for 46 percent of the list, although they constitute only 15 percent of the state's population. On other hand, Hispanics, who account for more than 15 percent of the population, appear to be underrepresented on the list, with less than 1 percent.
Democratic critics cited the tilt of the numbers.
"I'm outraged that the Bush administration has had four years to fix this problem and still has not fixed it," said Scott Maddox, chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. "We're going to have literally thousands of voters disenfranchised."
Three Democratic House members -- Reps. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach, Arthenia Joyner of Tampa and Anne Gannon of Delray Beach -- called on the Division of Elections to withdraw the felon database.
"The prospect of Florida repeating the same disenfranchisement of its citizens as it did in 2000 is appalling," they said in a joint letter.
But Republican leaders defended the process, noting that the Division of Elections had said the list highlighted "potential" felons and that it was up to the local supervisors to thoroughly investigate their legal standing.
"This is pure politics," said Alia Faraj, a spokeswoman for Gov. Jeb Bush. "There is a process in place to protect the integrity of elections and the privacy of voters. The (state elections officials have) worked closely with the NAACP to develop this redundant and rigorous process to protect the rights of all eligible voters."
In a statement, Secretary of State Glenda Hood tried to refute initial media reports citing thousands of errors in the state database.
She said there may be some confusion about felons who have had their rights restored through the clemency process but who must register again before they become eligible to vote.
Hood reiterated that local supervisors of elections would "rigorously review" any individuals on the felon list before removing them from the list of eligible voters. She also said the state was updating the database daily, using information from sources such as the Clemency Board and Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Across the state, most supervisors said they and their colleagues would not act hastily on the new database.
"The overwhelming majority will take a cautious approach to ensuring that only individuals that they can confirm as felons will be removed from the rolls," said Ion Sancho, supervisor of elections in Leon County.
Sancho said the supervisors agreed at their state convention last month in Key West to "thoroughly examine" anyone on the list before denying them the right to vote.
Sancho, who has served 16 years as an elections supervisor, said the felons list has been controversial since 1998, when the state first tried to use a central database to purge criminals from the voting rolls, rather than relying on local election officials to carry out the task.
The first attempt was heavily "flawed," as well as the 2000 list, he said. A felons list wasn't used in 2002, but this year's list appears to be just as problematic as the earlier versions, he said.
In Leon County, the list showed 850 voters that potentially should be removed from the voting rolls.
"We have identified a number of individuals who are not felons," Sancho said. "The more we delve into it, the more disquieting information we develop."
But Sancho said he was glad that a court ruling had made the list public for the first time.
"Secrecy is the ally of only two groups of people, the incompetent or the unjust," he said. "Secrecy prevents accountability. And particularly in the area of elections, accountability is a critical component to ensure that people have faith in their elective process."
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