Botched Name Purge Denied Some the Right to Vote
"The U.S. Civil Rights Commission, which is probing the Florida election, in March called the felon purge
and other Election Day problems "disturbing" and said the evidence "may ultimately support findings of prohibited discrimination." A final report from the commission is due for release early next month. "
By Robert E. Pierre
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 31, 2001; Page A01
First of two articles
TAMPA -- Kelvin King was turned away from the polls here in November when records showed that he was ineligible to vote as a convicted felon. County election officials learned days later that King's civil rights had been restored eight months earlier.
Sandylynn Williams had voted in every election since she was 18. But this time, election officials confused her with her sister -- a felon who had once used Williams's name -- and refused to let her vote.
"They sent me a letter of apology, and I just laughed," recalled Williams, 34, who said she had planned to vote for Democratic nominee Al Gore. "I was cheated out of voting."
The Tampa residents were among hundreds, perhaps thousands, of non-felons in Florida who civil rights lawyers contend were wrongly prevented from voting in the Nov. 7 election after state election officials and a private contractor bungled an attempt to cleanse felons from voter rolls.
The effort was so riddled with errors that a more precise tally will probably never be possible. But it is clear that at least 2,000 felons whose voting rights had been automatically restored in other states were kept off the rolls and, in many cases, denied the right to vote.
At the same time, some felons who should not have been allowed to vote slipped through and cast ballots.
Although the troubles with Florida's election procedures have been widely reported, the full breadth of the flaws in the state's system has emerged only over time. Florida's many problems, according to state and national inquiries and a review by The Washington Post, include unreliable voting machines, improper counting of absentee ballots and arbitrary and conflicting decisions by county election officials, to name a few.
Still underway is an examination of approximately 170,000 Florida ballots rejected by counting machines in November. The project, conducted by a consortium of news organizations that includes The Post, is designed to learn how so many potential votes went uncounted.
Six months removed from the charged post-election recounts, it is also clear, in the words of a state task force that reviewed the election, that many of the difficulties were "most serious in precincts with large numbers of elderly, low-income, immigrant, minority or inexperienced voters."
The impact of the botched felon purge fell disproportionately on black Floridians and, by extension, on the Democratic Party, which won the votes of 9 out of every 10 African American voters, according to exit polls.
No one has proven intent to disenfranchise any group of voters, but the snafus have fueled a widespread perception among blacks that an effort was made to dilute their voting power in an election that George W. Bush won by 537 votes -- a victory margin of 0.00009 of the 5.9 million votes counted.
A Washington Post poll, conducted in conjunction with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University, shows that nearly half of all blacks believe problems with voting machines and ballots fell disproportionately on minority voters; 85 percent of those respondents believe there was a deliberate attempt to reduce their political power.
The U.S. Civil Rights Commission, which is probing the Florida election, in March called the felon purge and other Election Day problems "disturbing" and said the evidence "may ultimately support findings of prohibited discrimination." A final report from the commission is due for release early next month.
Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who oversees state elections, maintain that problems encountered by voters were unintentional.
"After three days of hearings involving over 100 witnesses, the Civil Rights Commission has yet to be presented with any evidence of intentional discrimination in the conduct of the November 7, 2000, election in Florida," Bush said in a statement responding to the commission's criticisms. "I take seriously the alleged inefficiencies and bureaucratic errors identified in the commission's statement."
'There Were Barriers'
Outrage over the felon purge and other Election Day lapses spoiled for many blacks a major political success. Statewide, black turnout jumped 65 percent over 1996's, partly as a backlash to a Jeb Bush plan that ended affirmative action in university admissions and state contracts.
Blacks account for 13 percent of Florida's voting population but cast 15 percent of the 5.9 million votes for president, up from 10 percent in 1996, according to exit polls.
Vivian Heyward, who helped register friends and neighbors in Tampa as part of a get-out-the vote effort by the NAACP, can't get last fall's election off her mind. The NAACP and five other civil rights organizations have filed a lawsuit alleging that blacks were disproportionately affected by the election problems.
"That was one of the worst things that ever happened in this city. . . . A lot of people are saying, 'I'm never going to vote again,'" Heyward said. "Hopefully, we haven't lost them."
Black neighborhoods lost many more presidential votes than other areas because of outmoded voting machines and confusion about ballots. And on Election Day, complaints began rolling in across the state from registered voters whose names were not on precinct voting lists.
But poll workers could not get through to county election offices to verify voters' status, and many voters said they were forced to leave for work before they could cast ballots.
"They weren't expecting as many voters in those places as came," said David Bositis, senior political analyst at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. He advised the NAACP to focus on turnout rather than registration last fall.
Pam Iorio, the election supervisor in Hillsborough County, said a 50-person phone bank she added on Election Day was not enough. "When you have 6 million people who all do one thing at the same time, get a driver's license, go to a ballgame, you're going to have problems," Iorio said.
But Fred Galey, election supervisor in Brevard County, southeast of Orlando, said many voters were looking for something to "bitch about."
"Some people had to take an extra two or three minutes," he said. "Those that got impatient and left did not want to vote. People sit in line for 20 minutes at Burger King or McDonald's. If they go to the polling place and have to wait too long, they complain they were denied the right to vote."
But Mary Frances Berry, chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said testimony at hearings gives credibility to the complaints.
"We know there were barriers to people voting," Berry said. "What we don't know is whether those barriers were the result of discrimination or knuckleheadedness."
'We Warned Them'
Clearly, however, one of the major impediments to black voting was the purge of the voter rolls. Florida has one of the nation's strictest laws governing restoration of felons' voting rights. Thirty-one percent of the state's black men are barred from voting because of prior felonies.
The voter purge was mandated after the 1997 Miami mayoral race was overturned because votes were cast by felons and non-residents. Legislators ordered everyone off the voting rolls who did not belong. In the end, that proved to be tens of thousands of "probable felons." The purge of the voter rolls was previously described by several Florida newspapers and the Nation magazine.
The state mandated the hiring of an outside vendor for $4 million to compile a list of voters who had committed felonies in other states. Database Technologies (now ChoicePoint Inc.), creator of an Internet service widely used by law enforcement agencies for investigative purposes, was chosen to sort through state and national databases to identify felons.
From the beginning, Database Technologies raised serious concerns that non-felons could be misidentified. Florida does not regularly record Social Security numbers in its records, so its felons were identified by name and date of birth, including close but not exact matches.
That's how the state intended the plan to work.
"Obviously, we want to capture more names that possibly aren't matches and let the [county elections] supervisors make a final determination rather than exclude certain matches altogether," said Emmett "Bucky" Mitchell, who headed the state purge effort, in a March 1999 e-mail to Database Technologies product manager Marlene Thorogood, who had warned him of possible mistakes.
In an interview, Clay Roberts, director of the state's division of elections, confirmed the policy. "The decision was made to do the match in such a way as not to be terribly strict on the name."
In-house concerns persisted. "Let's remember there is a liability issue in our erroneously identifying individuals as felons or deceased," said George A. Bruder Jr., a company senior vice president, in a May 26, 2000, e-mail to Thorogood. "We need to be very careful in who we label as what. If we are unsure the default should be to NOT label them as anything."
The company admits it made some mistakes. One list sent to Florida officials inaccurately contained 8,000 people who had committed misdemeanors -- not felonies -- in Texas.
People wrongly tagged as felons because of the loose matching policy included judges and the father of a county election supervisor. Also on the list were at least 2,000 felons who moved to Florida from states that automatically restore voting rights.
It was left to local election supervisors to determine whether residents of their counties were accurately listed as felons. With little guidance from the state, county supervisors devised their own rules.
Many counties sent certified letters notifying residents that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement had listed them as felons. People who did not respond were removed from voting rolls -- a practice criticized by the civil rights groups that filed the lawsuit.
In places like Escambia County, voters on the list were required to prove to election officials that they were not felons. In Lake County, by contrast, Supervisor Emogene Stegall decided the list of "probable felons" sent by the state was so flawed that she did not use it.
"They're not sending us what the statute requires them to do, so I feel we're not bound to process those," Stegall said. "They're not sure. There are so many people who have the same name, same date of birth."
The list did catch many felons who had voted illegally in previous elections. One was Jeffrey Key of Tampa, who served more than three years on a 1989 armed robbery charge and resumed voting in 1992 without applying to have his rights restored. In 2000, he was turned away from the polls.
"They didn't inform me I had to do any of this," said Key, referring to prison officials. "By voting in 1992 and 1996, I thought everything was fine with me."
Many Florida legislators have criticized Database Technologies for accepting $4 million for what they consider shoddy work. But company officials insist the state caused the problem.
"We warned them," said James E. Lee, vice president of communications for the company. The list "was exactly what the state wanted. They said, 'The counties will verify the information, so you don't have to.' "
Staff writers John Mintz and Peter Slevin contributed to this report.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company |
