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Felonious Junk: Is Buddy Johnson the new Katherine Harris?

The new Voter Purger 2004(tm) list is out, and in the news lately. In a nutshell, thousands of Floridians, mostly minority Democrats, were wrongly disenfranchised in 2000 due to what many feel was an intentionally error ridden database of supposed felons. County supervisors of elections were instructed to use the state’s faulty list to scrub the voting roles of anyone whose name kinda sorta matched up with one on the list. William March picks up the story:

Now, just in time for the 2004 presidential election, the state is sending out another list, this one with about 47,000 names.

State officials say the public should trust this time that they got it right, and no one should be wrongly denied voting access because of the new list. ``It's not like 2000. It's a whole different system,'' said Jenny Nash, spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood.

In Tampa, Hillsborough County Elections Supervisor Buddy Johnson said he isn't worried about the process this year. His predecessor, Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, is among those worried for him.

``It could be that since I left the office [last year], the state has done a really good job of improving their list of felons. If so, that's great,'' she said. ``But when I left, it was clear that the state simply did not have an accurate database of people who have felony convictions.''

In Tallahassee, Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho said he and his fellow supervisors may not have the time, money or personnel to check the accuracy of the list, and he fears ``a replay of 2000.''

Process Appears `Hurried''

``The process to me appears hurried, incomplete, and changing in midstream of the election cycle,'' Sancho said. ``It's troubling to me.''

Nash said the new list won't repeat problems of the old one because it won't leave responsibility with those on the list to prove they're eligible to vote. ``The onus now is on the supervisor'' to prove a voter ineligible, she said.

The 2000 list and other voting problems led to lawsuits against the state and some counties by the NAACP. The civil rights organization and others expressed concern about a disproportionate effect on minorities.
......

As part of the legal battle settlement, Florida officials agreed to send counties information to help locate and restore voters whose names were wrongly removed from the rolls. That process is about halfway complete, said Elliot Mincberg, legal director of People for the American Way Foundation, co-counsel in the lawsuit.

He said county supervisors have reported restoring about 770 voters, but that doesn't include those from automatic- restoration states. The Florida secretary of state's office hasn't sent information about them to the counties yet, he said.

``Frankly, the state should first fix the problems with people who were erroneously thrown off before they start on another purge,'' Mincberg said. ``Any purge they do this year has to be scrupulously accurate and carefully done.''

Nash said the current list comes from comparing Florida Department of Law Enforcement records with a new, statewide database of registered voters. County supervisors should consider it a list of ``potential matches,'' not proven ineligibles, she said.

The list used standards, now tightened, for matching a name on a criminal record with a voter name that may not be identical in spelling, birth date or address.

The supervisors must send voters on the list certified letters, including forms to establish eligibility. Alternatively, the voter can attend a hearing. Supervisors then must consider each voter's evidence before making a decision. Still, if a voter doesn't respond within 30 days to the letter, or to an advertisement published in a local newspaper, the name must be purged from the list.
......

Sancho said his budget doesn't include money for postage for hundreds of certified letters or employee time to investigate criminal histories.

``This puts a tremendous burden on the supervisors, not unlike the burden in 2000,'' he said. ``Some may just throw up their hands and send everybody a letter. We know from past experience that's a road we don't want to follow.''

Once the letter is sent, he said, the burden of proof is no longer on the supervisor. A voter who doesn't respond within 30 days must be removed.

In his county, Sancho said, ``25 [percent] to 30 percent of our database is inaccurate at any given time because the population is so transient. The burden is still on the voter if they've moved.''

Two Sides In Tampa

Johnson, a Republican, said he's confident about doing the job in Hillsborough if his office gets information about possible felons and checks on them.

``The lists are really just reminders,'' he said. ``We may already have sorted through these or gotten the names from other sources.''

Johnson said the 2000 list included names of about 3,200 possible matches in the county. Of those, about 866 appeared to be matches. Under the state's new criteria, he said, 333 appear to be matches. Of the other 533 possible matches, he said, some may have been reinstated after being removed wrongly from the rolls.

Iorio, a Democrat, said eliminating former felons from the rolls is ``a misallocation of resources. The state spends an awful lot of money making sure ex-felons are kept off the rolls. When they're back in society, we want them back in the community doing things that are positive. We want them to vote. It would be far easier just to restore their right to vote.''

This article is a fairly accurate summary of where we stand, and several things jump out as worrisome.

First, it seems that we are probably going to have more problems this year. The serious, non-partisan supervisors of elections around the state all seem to be worried.

Next, the article mentions that the state is not even halfway toward restoring the in-state false positives from 2000, yet it is surging ahead with the latest new and improved version of Voter Purger 2004. Pam Iorio is right - we should restore felons’ right to vote. But state law prevents this right now.

Which brings us to my next concern: Republican Buddy Johnson was appointed by Jeb! to serve out Pam Iorio’s term as Hillsborough elections supervisor. The 2000 election may well have been decided by the actions of Katherine Harris, who held the dual roles of Florida’s Secretary of State, in charge of elections supervisors, and head of George Bush’s Florida campaign.

The fact that she was allowed to carry out her duties as Secretary of State while serving as a partisan supporter of one of the candidates whose election she was in charge of is mind boggling. Now, we have an obviously partisan (appointed by the pResident;s brother) elections supervisor in one of the most populous and most evenly divided counties in the state.

This partisan is downplaying the significance of removing close to a thousand Hillsborough voters from the roles. And that’s not all. The article says that Johnson says “he's confident about doing the job in Hillsborough if his office gets information about possible felons and checks on them“ (emphasis mine)

So, what’s with the qualifier? Is his office going to check? Or is he going to punt and make the voters take the initiative, as supervisor Sancho of Tallahassee suggests many of his colleagues might do?

The next paragraphs are even more disturbing: ``The lists are really just reminders,'' he (Johnson) said. ``We may already have sorted through these or gotten the names from other sources.''

Johnson said the 2000 list included names of about 3,200 possible matches in the county. Of those, about 866 appeared to be matches. Under the state's new criteria, he said, 333 appear to be matches. Of the other 533 possible matches, he said, some may have been reinstated after being removed wrongly from the rolls.”

So, our Republican Jeb!-appointed elections supervisor may or may not have already scrubbed the county rolls from some mysterious, unnamed “other sources”?

Further, he doesn’t seem to know or care if any names that were previously removed in error have been reinstated.

Gee, it looks like ole Buddy is doing exactly the job that Jeb! appointed him to do.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of Buddy and his laissez-faire “supervision”, remember that Buddy is one of those who really thinks it would be too much trouble to give a voter a receipt to verify that Hillsborough County’s new, paperless e-voting machines actually record the votes correctly:

"There's never been a perfect election," Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson said. "And there never will be."

So, when thousands of voters in Hillsborough are “mistakenly” turned away at the polls, and when a “glitch” results in thousands more electronic ballots not being counted, and when a recount proves to be impossible due to the lack of a paper trail, we’ll pat Buddy on the back and congratulate him on persevering through the maddening imperfections of his job.