BlogWood: MT Archives

Jeb!’s disenfranchisement tricks

Florida’s handling of Jeb!’s voter purge list shows not innocent errors, but a “high level of trickery,” according to U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek.

On Friday, we learned that the Miami Herald found about 2,100 people, mostly black Democrats, that were wrongly included on the purge list despite having had their civil rights restored by the state. When this news came out, Jeb! literally ran away rather than answer questions.

Now the Tampa Tribune reports that the state is defending its list and the methods used to build it. The state says it knows that 2,500 voters included on the list are now legally eligible to vote, but the state claims that the voters did not register when they should have, so the state has no choice but to follow the law and attempt to remove these Democrats from the rolls.

The problem with that argument is that it is flat wrong. Another state law makes the actual registration date a moot point, but Jeb!’s crack staff in the Secretary of State’s office somehow missed that little detail.

Further, the state claims that is has no way to track compliance with their illegally strict registration policy.

In other words, the state can tell that someone registered 2 days before they were legally supposed to, but the state claims to have no method to determine if that same person later re-registered in accordance with the state’s false interpretation of the law. So, if you jumped the gun, you lose. No restarts.

Shades of the 2000 election fiasco here, as the state is casting a very wide net in forming the purge list, and subsequently failing to weed out the false positives before making the list operative. Incredibly, the state is consistently able to develop complex data mining protocols to add names to its purge list, but seems immensely inept when it comes to fine tuning the list to safeguard the rights of Democratic voters.

Nobody disputes that the almost 2,500 people on the list of felons at risk of being erased from voter rolls have had their voting rights restored.

The problem is that broad disagreement exists between state election officials and voting rights advocates over how difficult it should be to clear them from a list of people believed to be felons.

The voters, overwhelmingly Democrats, were included because they registered to vote before they went through the clemency process and won back their voting rights.

The Division of Elections, an executive branch agency reporting to Gov. Jeb Bush, contends state law requires felons to register after their voting rights have been restored.

Officials acknowledged Tuesday that the list includes felons who likely have followed the state's registration policy but that there is no method of tracking compliance unless they move to a new county.

Voting rights advocates and some county election supervisors said the registration requirement being ordered by the state this year is unnecessary. The American Civil Liberties Union and Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho cite a separate state law that they say makes the registration date a moot point.

``There is a serious possibility that a fully qualified voter will be disenfranchised because of an administrative error,'' ACLU of Florida Legal Director Randall C. Marshall wrote in a letter Tuesday to Secretary of State Glenda Hood. The group is threatening a lawsuit unless she reverses her position on registration.
......

U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D- Miami, said, ``The governor's administration will stop at nothing to knock people from the rolls. This is an official document that came out of the highest levels of state government, and I wouldn't even call it an error but a high level of trickery.''
......

Janet Modrow, who shares oversight of the purge list, acknowledged in an interview Tuesday that she compared felons' original - not the latest - registration date with their clemency date to determine whether they need to register again.

Modrow said it will be each county election supervisor's responsibility to see whether the voter has registered since their clemency. This check was not suggested, however, in a checklist of verifications the state said it is distributing to the 67 election supervisors.

Division of Elections Director Dawn Roberts said voters who registered before they received clemency committed a serious mistake.

``This is an anomaly that should not have occurred. It is an anomaly that cannot be overlooked,'' she said.

In many cases, it had been overlooked for many years, and voters on the list of 2,500 have voted without incident for some time.

Modrow said she would have used more up-to-date information when compiling the list if it had been available.

Meek replied to the explanation with a blunt, ``Hogwash. I think that argument is weak and is not leveling with the people of the state of Florida.''

Many other mistakes on the formerly secret purge list are coming to light as well. Funny, but all of these “mistakes” seem to benefit Jeb! and his brother, but I’m sure that’s just coincidence.

Some people whose civil rights were restored before 1977 were excluded from a database used by state officials to identify felons who should be barred from voting, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law.

Before 1977, the clemency office did not always maintain certain identifying information, such as birthdates. Names without such information were not included in a database the state used to identify potential felons who should be barred from voting.

That means some people might have been wrongly included on the list of potential felons.

The Brennan Center, which is suing the state on behalf of felons who cannot vote, called that a "serious flaw" in the state's review.

All of these “errors” are coming to light due to the CNN lawsuit which forced the state to turn over the list to the public last week. Thanks to the bright lights now being shone on the process, the list may actually be thrown out by many county supervisors of elections. This is a good thing, but now some Florida residents will be much more likely to be disenfranchised, based solely on their address. Can anyone say “Equal Protection Clause?”

Florida's top election officials conceded Tuesday that they will take no legal action to force the state's 67 election supervisors to remove nearly 48,000 voters who have been identified by the state as potentially ineligible to vote.

This means the fate of these voters, some of whom appear to have been wrongly placed on the list, will be up to the election supervisor in each county, many of whom have been hesitant so far to remove any voter from the rolls. Some supervisors have said they were unsure if they had the time or staff needed to independently verify the background of voters prior to this fall's elections, but other supervisors have moved ahead anyway.
......

In May, the state sent elections supervisors a list of nearly 48,000 people it said were potential felons and ineligible to vote. That initial May memo gave no hint of discretion for supervisors, telling them that they ''must follow'' the procedures that require that a certified letter be sent to those on the list. Voters who did not reply to the letter or a subsequent newspaper advertisement, the memo told elections supervisors, ''must'' be removed.

But on Tuesday Hood put the burden solely on supervisors to research the background of voters before deciding whether enough evidence exists to purge them from the voter rolls.

''There has to be absolute proof; otherwise, they are not going to do anything but give the benefit of the doubt to the voter,'' Hood said.
......

However, state officials continued on Tuesday to insist that anyone who registered to vote prior to having their civil rights restored should be purged from the voter rolls even though they are now eligible to vote. The Herald has identified more than 1,600 voters on the list who fall into that category.

Roberts called such registrations ``invalid.''

''We ought not lose sight of the fact that this is an anomaly that should not have occurred,'' said Roberts, who said those names were included to alert county elections officials.

But the state could not answer what would happen if someone's name was removed from the rolls during the 30-day period prior to an election. Voters who register during that window cannot vote in the upcoming election.