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Felonious Junk: CYA letters not enough*

The “purge list” of possible felons that the state has sent to local elections supervisors continues to make the news. This time, the SP Times talks to several Bay Area elections supervisors to find out exactly how they plan to use the list.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued the state over the 2000 purge of felons, wants elections supervisors to look up criminal records at local courthouses.

"It would be a mistake and it would be an evasion of a legal responsibility of county supervisors of elections just to act on the list of potential felons," said Florida ACLU executive director Howard Simon. "Don't remove anybody from the rolls unless there is some piece of paper with evidence on it that shows they are a convicted felon.

"We're dealing with the most fundamental right of the American system."

Some supervisors may go find paper records. Others could simply compare the list they get from state elections officials with a felons roster from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement before mailing letters informing voters that they have been flagged as potential felons.

Tampa Bay area supervisors said they are still sorting through the procedures they will follow.

But the letter is the only verification state law requires of local supervisors.

"I feel better about it in the sense that they have heightened the filter," said Pasco Elections Supervisor Kurt Browning. "If I'm arrested as a felon, what are the chances I'm going to give you my proper name? I could give you any name, and it's up to you to disprove it. It's like hitting a moving target. It's a tough job.

"Did we, the state, or us, do our job well the last time we did this? I don't think we did."

It's not a perfect system, elections officials say, and some felons could wind up voting after all.

"I'm really erring on the right to vote, there being something considerable before denying that right," said Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson. "At the end of the day, it's a judgment call in some cases. ... The matching process is not as empirical as it might appear."

Florida is one of a seven states that bar felons from voting unless they successfully petition to have their rights restored, a long and cumbersome process.

Because felons are disproportionately Democrats, critics said the improper purge in 2000 could have been a decisive factor in the presidential election, when 19,398 voters were purged because the state said they were felons.

Many of the voters who were improperly removed from voting rolls were from states that do not bar felons from voting.

This year, the state has flagged more than 47,000 of the state's roughly 9-million registered voters as potential felons.

In 2000, the state hired ChoicePoint, a computer database company, to identify felons. State officials said the company cast too wide a net, but the company said the state wanted a wide net.

State elections officials, led by then-Secretary of State Katherine Harris, made little effort to verify ChoicePoint's list. Twenty elections supervisors ignored the list. But the rest simply purged their voter rolls without notifying voters.

Dozens of voters across Florida found out on election day that they could not vote.

This year, the state compiled its own list by comparing a statewide voter roll with a database of felony convictions compiled by FDLE. Each match is assigned a score, depending on the strength of the match.

To be flagged as a potential felon, the match has to score 50 points on an 80-point scale. Typos, nicknames, misspellings and data entry errors can affect the match.

But being flagged as a potential felon doesn't mean a voter is kicked off the list.

Each supervisor now has access to the FDLE and clemency board records used to match the voter file, as well as the match score. Elections workers can then review each record to verify the match.

But the only thing elections supervisors are required to do is mail a letter to voters informing them that they have been flagged as a potential felon, giving them the chance to challenge or correct information.

Local supervisors now have the list of potential felons, totaling nearly 7,000 in Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties.

Pasco's Browning plans to mail letters in the coming weeks. Pinellas is still working on its procedures. Hillsborough plans to mail letters by June 15.

Here we go. Letters are the only thing required by law, so who really thinks that most supervisors of elections are going to go beyond the basic requirements of the law and attempt to actually ferret out the false positives from this list? By putting the onus on the voter to prove eligibility, the elections supervisors can claim that they have done their jobs.

If a voter has moved, and the letter doesn’t reach him? Too bad. If a voter does not regularly peruse the legal announcements in the classified section of his local paper? Too bad. And if many democratic voters are wrongly denied the right to vote in November? Well, that’s just an unfortunate tragedy, one that no one, even in their wildest imagination, could foresee.

Learn more about this issue here.

*CYA - Cover Your Ass - d as little as you can get away with without getting in trouble.