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Countdown to Election Day

Florida needs to move quickly to clean up its voter registration rolls. The statewide primary is five months away. Yet officials in Tallahassee have yet to inform some of Florida's largest counties whether felons, dead people or others who shouldn't be are registered as qualified voters. Local elections supervisors cannot wait until the last minute to prepare for Election Day. Further delays will sap public confidence in the state's ability to hold elections.

Florida proudly unveiled a statewide voter registration system three months ago, meeting a Jan. 1 deadline set under the Help America Vote Act that Congress passed in the wake of Florida's 2000 presidential recount debacle. Local supervisors laud the effort for bringing uniformity to voting. Ideally, verifying a voter's eligibility through a reliable statewide database should reduce the chance that felons or the deceased could remain on the rolls or that voters could exploit weaknesses county by county to manipulate an election. The state will provide backup for local registration rolls and voters will not have to re-register if they move to another county. Centralizing the process should make it more convenient and accurate. Officials also say they are getting up to speed on a project that formally has existed only for months.

But as St. Petersburg Times staff writer Steve Bousquet reported Sunday, elections supervisors in Pasco, Hernando, Leon, Bay, Broward and Orange counties say the state has not informed them since Jan. 1 of any voter who has been found by the new system as ineligible. Supervisors say the new Florida Voter Registration System has been plagued by glitches and jurisdictional problems that have slowed the verification process. Counties must wait for a list from the state Division of Elections, which itself relies on other bureaucracies to supply databases for background checks.

Several supervisors told the Times that despite the delays they are comfortable the rolls will be ready for the Sept. 5 primary. Citrus County Supervisor Susan Gill, president of the statewide association of supervisors, said state elections officials have a sense of urgency and are focused on providing accurate registration lists. "They are not dragging their feet," she said.

Pasco Supervisor Kurt Browning said the delays are the product of "a huge undertaking" and do not involve "monumental" problems. "The confidence level of supervisors has gone up significantly," Browning said. "We're optimistic because we're all in this together now. Counties are not out there on their own."

That long view is encouraging, but counties still face a rush this summer preparing their rolls, and supervisors have already muddled through local elections without new lists (Pasco had five municipal elections Tuesday). The director of the state's elections division, Dawn Roberts, said "accuracy is more important than expediency." But both are needed to restore public confidence in a state with a such a troubled history with elections.

[Last modified April 12, 2006, 01:07:16]