Florida is scrapping its much-condemned “These May Be Felons So Consider Not Letting Them Vote List” — though not because of its inaccuracies, but because it left off Hispanic felons.
The decision to scrap the list was made after it was reported that the list contained few people identified as Hispanic; of the nearly 48,000 people on the list created by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, only 61 were classified as Hispanics.
That was because when voters register in Florida, they can identify themselves as Hispanic. But the potential felons database has no Hispanic category, which excludes many people from the list if they put that as their race.
The list was coming under harsh criticism already, due to numerous errors. Florida is one of several states that blocks convicted felons (even from other states) from voting without applying to the state for clemency.
The purge of felons from voter rolls has been a thorny issue since the 2000 presidential election. A private company hired to identify ineligible voters before the election produced a list with scores of errors, and elections supervisors used it to remove voters without verifying its accuracy. A federal lawsuit led to an agreement to restore rights to thousands of voters.
The new list was released July 1, with officials saying Gov. Bush’s administration was simply complying with federal election law. Problems with the list were quickly detected.
State officials have said there are people on the list who are not felons, and elections workers have flagged more than 300 people listed who might have received clemency.
Another problem was that about 2,700 people who had received clemency were still on the list. That was because they had registered to vote before they received clemency. The state initially required them to register again, but later backed off.
A twist most folks don’t know about is that the 1997 Miami mayoral race was invalidated because of sloppy voter rolls, both “dead” people voting and ineligible felons. The Florida legislature decided at that point to crack down on the voter rolls to try to identify ineligible voters.
Whether they did so competently is another matter. But as long as Florida has the no-felons law on the books, some sort of list will be critical for local counties and precincts to validate against.
Let’s hope that any subsequent list produced will be more accurate than the one just tossed out.