Voteless in Florida
Thousands of Florida residents were struck from the voter lists because
they were mistakenly identified as ex-felons, just months before what has
become the closest election in US history. With Bush apparently leading
Gore by only hundreds of votes, in a state with hundreds of thousands of
disenfranchised voters, could similar errors be tipping the race?
by Sasha Abramsky
Mother Jones online
November 8, 2000
The cliffhanger in Florida may ultimately be decided by those who
didn't vote. Hundreds or even thousands of Florida residents may have been
erroneously crossed off the voter lists because they were mistakenly
identified as ex-felons.
Felon disenfranchisement laws may have hurt Gore in two ways. With the
result of the presidential election coming down to a handful of votes in
Florida, the disenfranchisement of close to three quarters of a million
felons and ex-felons in the state may well have made the difference
between a Gore presidency and a Bush one. Considering that the majority of
felons are poor, black and Latino -- that is, likely Democratic voters --
had fewer than two percent of the disenfranchised in Florida voted, Gore
would have probably been elected president.
But even more disturbing is the possibility that a significant number
of Floridians may have been wrongfully barred from voting -- perhaps enough
to have tipped the race.
Just months ago, nearly 12,000 Floridians were informed by the state
Division of Elections that they had lost their voting rights because of
felony convictions in other states. But the company hired by the state to
compile that list of names made a massive mistake and misidentified
thousands of people, according to the Palm Beach Post and other Florida
papers. In response to a barrage of complaints from irate voters, nearly
8,000 of those who had received the notices were subsequently reinstated on
the eligible voter lists in time for yesterday's vote.
George Bruder, senior vice president of the Boca Raton-based company,
Database Technologies, called the inaccurate lists "a miscommunication."
Representatives of the company did not return calls inquiring as to whether
the other 4,000 voters on the list turned out to be genuine felons or
ultimately had their voting rights restored. Florida election officials
also could not be reached for comment.
In a state with such a huge number of disenfranchised citizens, the
possibility that other such errors have gone undetected is impossible to
ignore. In fact, in a separate, similar incident in August, some 500 people
in Miami had their voting rights restored after they turned out to either
be non-felons or felons who had been given voting clemency, according to
the Tampa Tribune.
In recent years, the Florida Division of Law Enforcement has moved
aggressively to remove felons who had sneaked onto the voter rolls. In
1998, the state reported that more than 50,000 felons were voting in
Florida. In an effort to crack down on these voters, state authorities
provided lists of resident felons to each county; counties then sent out
letters informing these people they were being struck from the voter
rolls. The state left it up to each county to determine whether the voters
they deleted from eligibility were indeed felons; some counties, in turn,
placed the onus on individuals who claimed they were the victim of a
mistake to prove it, according to local newspapers. At least one county
gave citizens only 30 days to respond with a notarized affidavit
challenging their disenfranchisement.
In some instances, it is possible legitimate voters whose names were
being used as aliases by felons were struck off the voter rolls. In Martin
County, for example, Elections Supervisor Peggy Robbins remembers that two
people reported being sent the letters erroneously. One person said he had
been wrongly disenfranchised several times. If the recipients didn't phone
to challenge the letters, says Robbins, there would be no way to rectify
the mistake.
How many people might be affected? "There might be one or two," in her
county, Robbins believes. "In a great big county, there might be more."
Small numbers, but Florida has 67 counties; if this race comes down to just
a few hundred votes, such glitches could provide the Democratic Party with
grounds for challenging the result in the courts.
The wrongful-disenfranchisement question joins a lengthening list of
voting irregularities in Florida. In Palm Beach County, thousands of Gore
voters may have mistakenly marked their ballots for Pat Buchanan, thanks to
a confusingly laid-out ballot. ABCNews.com reports that thousands of other
Gore votes may not have been counted because of a computer error in Volusia
County. Officials of both major parties also reported that many voters were
apparently turned away from the polls and that some precints ran out of
ballots. Several papers reported that white state Highway Patrol officers
set up a checkpoint near a balloting site in a heavily black district in
Broward County, allegedly prompting state and federal officials to
investigate whether the incident amounted to intimidation against
African-American voters.
In almost any other election, the number of potential
wrongful-disenfranchisement errors would be so small as to not matter.
But, if a couple thousand -- or even a few hundred -- people who would have
voted were wrongfully deprived of their right to do so, it is at the very
least possible that the election of the most powerful man in the world
will have been swung by bad information about eligible voters fed into
computers.
