Federal scrutiny of law could let felons vote

Questioning by the U.S. Justice Department may hold up elections officials' use of a state list to purge voting rolls.

By LUCY MORGAN, Times Tallahassee Bureau Chief

© St. Petersburg Times
published June 27, 2002

TALLAHASSEE -- The U.S. Justice Department is raising questions about a new Florida elections law, and state officials worry the result could mean thousands of felons will vote in the Sept. 10 primaries.

Federal officials gave the state 60 days to respond to a series of questions about the new law. Because of past discrimination in five Florida counties, including Hillsborough, all changes in state elections laws must be approved by the Justice Department.

The questions focus on how legislators came up with the law and how the state would enforce it.

The law was a response to complaints from Floridians who say they were denied the right to vote in the 2000 election because they were wrongly accused of being felons. Those problems stemmed from a flawed list distributed by the state Division of Elections.

Lawmakers approved a new process that directs local elections supervisors to notify voters identified as felons by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Such voters are entitled to hearings.

The questions by federal officials mean local elections officials probably will not have time to schedule hearings for people whose names appear on the list in time for the primaries.

Hillsborough County Elections Supervisor Pam Iorio filed a formal objection to the procedures in the law. She contends the state could not presume that lists of felons produced by the state are accurate, after what happened in 2000.

Some elections officials ignored the state's list in 2000 and did not remove any voters, but others sent notices to voters believed to be felons. In some cases those voters failed to receive the notices and were unaware until Election Day that their names were being scrubbed from the rolls.

Hillsborough removed 2,200 voters' names from the rolls only to discover later that 12 were not felons. "I'd rather err on the side of the voter," Iorio said Wednesday.

Some felons might slip through this year, state officials say. "But it would be a far greater problem if we had innocent people removed from the rolls," Iorio added.

The law requires local elections supervisors to purge voters when their names appear on the state list, a more restrictive step than in 2000, when state regulations left a lot of discretion in the hands of local elections supervisors.

"This was no better than the old process," complained Iorio.

Pinellas Elections Supervisor Deborah Clark said federal officials are right to question the law. No one in Pinellas County was illegally denied the right to vote two years ago, because voters who said their rights had been restored were given a chance to prove it, Clark said.

Pasco Elections Supervisor Kurt Browning said he disagrees with Iorio about the extent of the problem. "This leaves us in limbo," Browning said.

A provisional ballot that allows voters who are not on the registration lists to cast a ballot while they establish eligibility would take care of these questions, Browning said. "I understand the right to vote is a very sensitive right," Browning added. "But where is the responsibility of voters?"

It's just the latest complication for elections officials, who are redrawing the lines of most voting precincts to accommodate changes in legislative and congressional districts. Hillsborough County commissioners approved new precincts Tuesday. Pasco commissioners will consider the new lines July 9, and Pinellas will start mailing notices in August unless federal judges reviewing the plans order changes.

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