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LUCY MORGANThe secretary of state announces a new agency to handle the list, replacing one too flawed to use Nov. 2.
TALLAHASSEE - Responding to a critical audit, Secretary of State Glenda Hood said Monday she will create a bureau to develop a statewide voter registration list in hopes of eliminating controversies that have plagued recent elections.
The new list will be designed to prevent anyone from voting in more than one place, and to remove names of dead people or felons who have not had their rights restored.
Hood said the development of that list will become the priority of the Bureau of Registration Services, which will handle all measures relating to the new Help America Vote Act approved by Congress after the 2000 election.
The changes were announced after a 50-page audit criticizing the way the Division of Elections managed a $2.2-million contract with Accenture, hired in 2001 to create a statewide voter registration list.
That list contained the names of felons who would be prevented from voting unless their civil rights had been restored. County election officials were to consult the list to prevent that from happening.
But the list was scrapped before the 2004 elections after revelations that it mistakenly excluded Hispanic felons.
The felons list has been a hot-button issue since the 2000 presidential election, when some voters discovered at polling sites that they had been erroneously stricken from the rolls. The loudest complaints came from Democrats, who claimed it was mostly their supporters who were prevented from voting.
The state then turned to Accenture, a huge consulting and technology firm, to create a list that election supervisors were to use this year to screen felons whose voting rights had not been restored.
But the list proved inaccurate.
"No person was denied their right to vote in the 2004 election," Hood noted. "That's very important."
The 50-page audit, done by Hood's own inspector general, Kirby J. Mole, said inadequate project management within the state elections division created most of the problems.
"There was no evidence detected to substantiate that the division intended for such disparities to occur," Mole said.
In addition to poor management, elections officials failed to properly notify the NAACP when they made changes in the way the 2004 list was being developed, a violation of a court settlement reached after the NAACP filed suit in 2001.
The elections division also failed to notify the U.S. Department of Justice, which must approve any change in election procedures.
Asked who was responsible for the failure, Hood said the division was directed by Clay Roberts, who ran the office for Hood's predecessor, Katherine Harris.
Auditors found that elections staffers who were handling the 2004 list had other duties and little time to supervise preparation.
The list was compiled with information from several state agencies. But some of that information conflicted because of the way agencies collect it.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, for example, does not classify felons as Hispanic. As a result, Hispanic felons were removed from the list because their identities did not match up with information from other agencies.
In another example, state clemency officials did not keep the date of birth for felons whose rights were restored prior to 1977, leaving more than 5,000 names off the list of eligible voters.
Florida's Bureau of Vital Statistics provided information on deaths but did not keep track of Floridians who died outside the state. As a result some deceased voters remain on voting lists.
Hood took over the department in February 2003, almost two years after the state entered into the contract with Accenture.
In addition to making internal changes in the way her office handles elections, Hood said she expects to seek some changes in state election laws when the Legislature convenes in 2005.