October 18, 2004
Jeb! was warned of felon list flaws
So, as BlogWood readers already know, Jeb! knew. Nothing surprising here, just more confirmation that for the Bush family, acquiring and maintaining power trump silly pie in the sky ideas like democracy and stuff.
Gov. Jeb Bush ignored advice from leery state officials to "pull the plug" on a flawed felon voters list before it went out to county election offices, according to a published report over the weekend.Computer experts in the Department of State and Florida Department of Law Enforcement were concerned about the software program that matched data on felons with voter registration rolls to create the purge list of 48,000 names, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported.
Jeff Long, a computer expert with the FDLE, told his supervisor in a May 4 e-mail that Paul Craft, the Department of State's point man on the purge list, had recommended it be scrapped.
"The Gov rejected their suggestion to pull the plug, so they're "going live' with it this weekend," Long wrote in an e-mail obtained by the newspaper after a public records request.
Two months later, Secretary of State Glenda Hood junked the database after acknowledging that 2,500 people on the list had their voting rights restored through the state's clemency process. Most were Democrats, and many were black.
Also, Hispanics, who often vote Republican in Florida, were almost entirely absent from the list because of an error when the two state databases were merged.
When is some intrepid reporter gonna do an in-depth interview with family man Ed Kast? I bet he knows a little about this story.
Much more on Florida’s felonious list.
Posted by Norwood at October 18, 2004 05:27 AM