No one said democracy would be easy, but should it be so hard?
By MARY JO MELONE
Published June 21, 2004
Buddy Johnson, the Hillsborough County elections supervisor, thought he was doing me a favor.
He sent me a flow chart to explain how he'll figure out who's a felon and who's not, and, as a result, who can't vote this year.
This was supposed to produce some clarity. But with all those lines and arrows, ovals and circles, as well as abbreviations for Clerk of Circuit Court, the Office of Executive Clemency, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, and Johnson's own office, the chart resembled a PC motherboard.
But I'll cut Johnson some slack. He has a job no sane person would want. He's supposed to make sure that all those in Hillsborough County who are eligible to vote and want to vote get the chance. He's among that unlucky crowd, the elections supervisors of Florida, charged with getting the rest of the country to stop laughing at us. He has to help prove we know how to run an election.
You remember, I'm sure, that in 2000, scores of people were disqualified from voting because records - in a remarkably sloppy search carried out for the state by a private company - incorrectly labeled them felons. Many were black and presumed to be Democrats.
The state now has a precise procedure to avoid the last election's embarrassments. This is how it works.
The FDLE searched its database of 4.6-million criminal records. Out came the names of 600,000 convicted felons.
Those names were compared with election records. It turned out that nearly 48,000 reported felons were also registered to vote. That's the list that was sent to elections supervisors such as Johnson, who now has the headache of figuring out who among the 3,500 from Hillsborough can vote, and who can't.
Wish him lots of luck. The first thing Johnson intends to do is send one of his 28 employees to the Clerk of Circuit Court's Office, where criminal case files are maintained. The elections employee will take each name and check it against local criminal records. Names and birthdates must be an exact match. There can be no conflict involving race, sex or Social Security number. The elections employee must do all this by hand.
Already, Johnson has arranged to have work space set aside in the offices of Richard Ake, the Hillsborough Clerk of the Circuit Court, where the research will be done.
That will be one way of verifying who's a felon and who's not. But Johnson will also write a letter to those on the felons list. He'll ask them to respond in writing. The letter will tell them that if they don't respond, it will be assumed they are felons and can't vote.
All this work has to be done, and yet it may not matter. If questionable voters can't be cleared in time for the August primary or the November general election, Johnson will err on their side. They will be allowed to vote.
And if a voter who the elections office believes is a felon shows up on election day declaring he's not, Johnson will let him cast what's called a provisional ballot, and the discrepancy will be settled later by the county canvassing board.
There are further complications. As a result of the 2000 meltdown, Gov. Jeb Bush has been under pressure to restore the civil rights, including the right to vote, of thousands of convicted felons. Already, 22,000 have had or are about to get their voting rights back automatically. Thousands of others, because of the nature of their crimes, will have to petition the state's Clemency Board, which is headed by the governor.
As last week ended, Johnson wasn't sure how the restoration of rights to this other batch of felons - whatever the number from Hillsborough County - might affect the work ahead. I'm not surprised. You'd have to be a genius to keep so many names and numbers, and list after list, straight.
