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Mon 12 Jul, 2004 12:09 am
Posted on Sun, Jul. 11, 2004
List abandoned, but doubts linger
Gov. Jeb Bush gets points for scrapping the controversial felon-purge list, but questions about Florida's readiness for the 2004 election linger.
BY LESLEY CLARK
Four years after earning the moniker Flori-duh, the state is again risking becoming a late-night talk show one-liner for mismanaging a presidential election.
Once again, there is turmoil over a list of who is eligible to vote, and the voting machines themselves in some of the state's biggest counties are under question: The touchs-creen machines touted as a space-age solution to the 1960s-era punch-card dinosaurs are proving to be a colossal headache.
Sensing a mounting public relations disaster less then four months before what could be another squeaker of a presidential election, state officials Saturday yanked the controversial ''felon-purge'' voter list. It was a concession to the critics who barraged the administration with complaints and data showing that the list was riddled with errors -- this despite Gov. Jeb Bush's vow that the state, after the 2000 debacle, would become a model of election reform for the nation.
The decision to scrap the list, endorsed by Bush, was a deft public relations move by a politician keenly attuned to staying on message and telling all who will listen that he inherited most of the state's voting problems from previous administrations.
But scrapping the list is unlikely to quell critics of the Republican governor.
TROUBLE ARISES
The controversy started to blaze out of Bush's control when The Herald reported that more than 2,100 people remained on the list of potentially ineligible voters despite having won clemency -- the right to vote -- after serving their sentences. Many of them were black -- part of the Democratic base that mobilized against George W. Bush's candidacy in 2000 and nearly cost him the presidential election.
Then the discovery this week that Hispanics -- who in Florida lean Republican -- weren't on the felon purge list sent Bush critics and conspiracy theorists into overdrive, considering that the list was prepared by a Republican administration that went to court to block the public's right to review it.
For Bush critics, it all sounded eerily similar to the events of 2000, in which thousands of blacks complained of being denied the right to vote in the state that delivered the White House to the governor's brother by just 537 votes.
''The actions of the state have been either inept or nefarious,'' said Ralph Neas, president of People For the American Way, which challenged the state's similarly flawed purge list in 2000.
The decision to drop the controversial list, following the disclosure of the Hispanic omission Saturday in The New York Times, was said to be that of Secretary of State Glenda Hood, a Bush appointee. And Bush quickly said that he agreed.
''It was the right thing to do,'' Bush said Saturday in Miami. ``The perception of all this begins to become reality. . . .''
The governor chalked up the swirl of conspiracy theories to the ''political process'' and to Democrats' hopes of turning out voters ``for their own cause.''
He said the omission of Hispanics was simply an ``oversight and a mistake.''
Perception for Bush threatened to become a reality: As the chairman of his brother's reelection campaign in Florida, he's been on a mission to tout what he says have been the benefits to Florida of his brother's presidency. Saturday morning at a downtown Fort Lauderdale hotel he extolled the president's policies on education and home-ownership to a black audience.
NATIONAL EXPOSURE
But newspapers have continued to focus on the voting mishaps, and the story went national on Saturday with the New York Times piece.
Civil rights groups said the state led by the self-proclaimed ''e-governor'' has routinely failed to deliver an accurate felon-purge list and predicted that more stories about mistakes would emerge.
Bush, though, defended the state's election readiness to reporters, noting that Florida has spent $30 million on voter education programs and millions more on new voting machines.
''We're in much better shape today as it relates to this state dealing with a close election,'' he said.
Democrats said the governor did the right thing in killing the list but added that he must go further.
''It's not enough just to scrap the list,'' said Tony Welch, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee. ``This is a red flag for Gov. Bush and the Legislature to review the entire elections process because Florida does not need another debacle on Election Day 2004. That would be inexcusable.''
Herald staff writer Karl Ross contributed to this report.
Voter eligibility up to counties
Posted on Sun, Jul. 11, 2004
Voter eligibility up to counties
State tosses its roster of felons
By Bill Cotterell
DEMOCRAT POLITICAL EDITOR
Because of a computer glitch that kept Hispanics off a list of people supposedly ineligible to vote, the state scrapped its error-prone process Saturday and told county officials they're on their own figuring out who should be stripped of the right to vote in the 2004 elections.
In the 2000 election that gave George W. Bush the presidency, thousands of eligible voters were turned away from the polls because their names inaccurately appeared on a similar list. This year, the state pledged a higher level of accuracy in providing the names of possible felons who should be taken off the voter rolls.
"This was just a complete fiasco on the part of the state, to think such a thing could be accomplished," Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho said Saturday. "Believe me, 'help' like that we don't need."
The gaffe is a politically sensitive one because blacks and Democrats were statistically over-represented on the list of supposed felons, and Hispanics in Florida vote heavily Republican.
In the 2000 election, when Bush carried Florida by a much-disputed margin of 537 votes, there were some reports of convicted felons voting illegally but many more complaints of black voters being improperly barred from voting.
Florida is one of seven states that don't automatically restore felons' rights to vote after they have done their time. Felons' names would appear on the list of ineligible voters if they hadn't applied for clemency or hadn't reregistered after getting their rights restored. But even a law-abiding citizen could end up on the list because of a paperwork mistake or if his or her name was similar to that of a criminal.
Secretary of State Glenda Hood emphasized that it was not a "purge list" but merely a list of names that county election supervisors needed to check out.
Because of the potential for error, the Tallahassee Democrat and other news and civil-rights organizations went to court and won the right for copies of the list to be made available to the public.
Sancho, who said he quickly spotted "a couple dozen errors" on the list of about 850 names he received from the state, said he received a call from The New York Times late last week about the apparent absence of Hispanics on the list.
Voter records and criminal records don't identify Hispanics the same way, Sancho said. So when the state Division of Elections matched the two sets of records, only 61 Hispanics ended up on a list of 47,763. Sancho lists himself as Hispanic on his voter registration.
"It strains credulity to think that Hispanics were somehow left off the list," said Ralph G. Neas of the People For the American Way Foundation, one of the groups trying to help people who appeared on the list in error. "While it appears that the checks and balances of a robust democracy have prevailed in this instance, the actions of the state have been either inept or nefarious."
Hood said the statewide voter database "was assembled in complete compliance with the matching process that was agreed to" in a settlement with the NAACP and cleared by the U.S. Department of Justice and the courts.
Although the state was scrapping its list, she added, county election officials "are required to uphold their constitutional obligation and will continue to work with clerks of the court to ensure that ineligible felons are removed from the rolls."
Sancho said he will consult Leon County Clerk of Court Bob Inzer about comparing the voter lists against court records.
Using the list provided by the state and the process the state required for tracking down everyone on it would have cost "at least $5,000 in postage" for registered letters to be sent, Sancho said, "plus the cost of diverting staff who should be planning, training and administering an election now.
"I'm very glad that the Division of Elections has seen fit to end this awful experiment."
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