# It couldn't happen again in Florida, could it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 8, 2004, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188 "2004-07-08T23:49:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Orbifold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/779978/32.png) [@Orbifold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orbifold)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2004, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/21 "2004-07-11T12:45:16Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > It’s one piece of ID, not two. I only produced a driver’s license. And I was specifically asked to provide two pieces of ID. Odd. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2004, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/22 "2004-07-12T16:25:37Z")
Florida has decided to scrap the felons list. Here’s the story from yesterday’s _St. Petersburg Times:_ [urll][http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/661478871.html?MAC=34175ecdd2af66f1d42576489bf89eaf&did=661478871&FMT=FT&FMTS=FT&date=Jul+11%2C+2004&author=MATTHEW+WAITE&printformat=&desc=Florida+scraps+felon+vote+list](http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/661478871.html?MAC=34175ecdd2af66f1d42576489bf89eaf&did=661478871&FMT=FT&FMTS=FT&date=Jul+11%2C+2004&author=MATTHEW+WAITE&printformat=&desc=Florida+scraps+felon+vote+list) > [@](#): > > Nine days after making the names of more than 47,000 potential felon voters public, state officials have scrapped the entire list, saying it was too flawed to be trusted. > > County supervisors of elections were told Saturday not to use the list of people the state believed had committed felonies and illegally registered to vote. > > Florida is one of seven states that bars felons from voting unless their civil rights have been restored. > > Counties were supposed to verify the information, contact the voters, and eliminate felons from their voter rolls, though few had started. > > The state had tried to keep the list a secret. It fought a lawsuit aimed at opening the records to the public. A series of errors emerged once a Tallahassee judge rejected the state’s arguments and released the records on July 1. > > The error that proved final - and garnered national attention - was that Hispanics were largely overlooked because of glitches in how the state records information about race and ethnicity. > > The list was created by cross-checking voter registration and criminal records. Of the more than 47,000 voters on the potential felon list, Hispanics made up one tenth of 1 percent - this in a state where nearly 1 in 5 residents is Hispanic. > > Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood issued a written statement Saturday saying the exclusion of Hispanics was “unintentional and unforeseen.” > > “We are deeply concerned and disappointed that this has occurred,” Hood said. > > Many Hispanic voters vote Republican. That they were largely omitted from a list disproportionately weighted with Democratic- leaning blacks has fueled theories that voter rolls were being manipulated for political motives. State officials said it was data errors, not politics, that excluded Hispanics from the list. > > “Not including Hispanic felons that may be voters on the list . . . was an oversight and a mistake. . . . And we accept responsibility and that’s why we’re pulling it back,” said Gov. Jeb Bush, who was in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday at an “African-Americans for Bush” rally in support of his brother’s re-election as president. > > Scrapping the list for the 2004 election came as a relief to local supervisors of elections, who have openly been wondering how they were going to accurately verify information on the list with few resources and no training. So I guess this is going to be a non-issue for the election this year, at least in Florida. If the Pubbies want to rig this one, they’ll have to get even more creative. Look for even more press on protesters demanding a paper trail for the new touchscreen voting computers. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2004, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/23 "2004-07-12T16:29:53Z")
Sorry, flubbed the link. Here it is again: [http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/661478871.html?MAC=34175ecdd2af66f1d42576489bf89eaf&did=661478871&FMT=FT&FMTS=FT&date=Jul+11%2C+2004&author=MATTHEW+WAITE&printformat=&desc=Florida+scraps+felon+vote+list](http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/661478871.html?MAC=34175ecdd2af66f1d42576489bf89eaf&did=661478871&FMT=FT&FMTS=FT&date=Jul+11%2C+2004&author=MATTHEW+WAITE&printformat=&desc=Florida+scraps+felon+vote+list) ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2004, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/24 "2004-07-12T17:01:52Z")
> [@Orbifold](#): > > And I was specifically asked to provide two pieces of ID. Odd. I got the distinct sense there wasn’t a lot of intense security at the polling place. I was waiting for them to ask for more ID - or proof of citizenship at least, which a driver’s license is not - but nope. Frankly, unless there was a massive organized effort to cheat the system, I don’t think it much matters. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2004, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/25 "2004-07-12T18:24:24Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > So I guess this is going to be a non-issue for the election this year, at least in Florida. To steal from an old _Doonesbury_ strip, “Just remember, these are only the folks who got caught.” ---
**Author:** ![presidebt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c37758/32.png) [@presidebt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/presidebt)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2004, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/26 "2004-07-12T20:05:27Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > Is it that hispanic felons are in a different database, or that republican felons are kept in a different database? Was it racial profiling or party profiling that messed up the merge? This is an excellent question and one I’d like to see answered. I don’t know much about merging databases, but what could have gone wrong that just Hispanic voters ended up being off the felon list? Can someone with more knowledge in the area than I explain how this could have happened “accidentally”? ---
**Author:** ![mack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mack)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2004, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/27 "2004-07-12T20:35:34Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Florida has decided to scrap the felons list. OK, so now what? Aren’t they going to be in violation of their own rules if felons who shouldn’t vote _do_ vote? Doesn’t this leave a door open for litigation? > [@presidebt](#): > > Can someone with more knowledge in the area than I explain how this could have happened “accidentally”? It could be a problem with how Hispanics were categorized in the databases that were merged. When you’re asking for racial/ethnicity data White, Black, Asian, etc. are fairly straightforward. ‘Hispanic’ isn’t as straightforward and sometimes Hispanic won’t be an option at all. In a place with a large Hispanic population there may be varying distinctions within “Hispanic” For instance in one database the choices might just be White, Black, Asian, Other, and in “other”, someone writes “Hispanic” and in the other database the choices might be White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, Other. When you merge you get a mismatch between “Hispanic” and “Other - Hispanic” and the mismatch is tossed out. Something along those lines might have happened. The concern I have is - if what I described is what happened - when stuff like that happens it’s usually picked up on early in the verification process (“Hey, what happened to this guy and this guy and this guy?”). An error like that should have been dealt with way before the list made it up the chain. ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2004, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/28 "2004-07-12T20:48:52Z")
> [@mack](#): > > Something along those lines might have happened. Something like that. From the [link I posted _two days ago_](http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&e=7&u=/ap/felons_voting_hispanics): > [@](#): > > 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 law enforcement list was compared to the voter rolls to determine who should be barred from voting. > > The glitch, first reported by the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, affected only those who identified themselves as Hispanic. A review of the voter list by The Associated Press found others with Hispanic surnames who did not identify themselves as Hispanic. ---
**Author:** ![mack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mack)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2004, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/29 "2004-07-12T21:00:24Z")
Well there ya go, then! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2004, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/30 "2004-07-12T21:51:09Z")
> [@mack](#): > > OK, so now what? > > Aren’t they going to be in violation of their own rules if felons who shouldn’t vote _do_ vote? > > Doesn’t this leave a door open for litigation? All it does, in theory, is put things back the way they were before 2000. In Florida, when you register to vote, you have to swear an oath that you have not been convicted of a felony or, if you have, your rights have been restored. I’ve never heard of an instance of someone taking such an oath falsely – you would have to be pretty rash, since that would be perjury, a crime in its own right and a violation of your probation, if you’re on probation. But verifying your eligibility to vote would be the responsibility of the supervisor of elections of the county where you are seeking to register. Now, I do not know whether there has ever been any mechanism for automatically de-registering a voter as soon as he or she is convicted of a felony. But, if there was, apparently Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Katherine Harris were not satisfied with it. They contracted a private company to come up with a list of “felons,” sent it to all the county supervisors, and, in effect, instructed them, if any of these people are registered to vote in your county, you must purge them from the rolls. As we now know, this led to the de-registration of many voters who had never been convicted of a felony, but just happened to have a name similar to someone who had been; and, I believe, most of them did not find out they had been purged, until they showed up on election day and were turned away – too late to take any action to correct their status. The state’s decision to scrap the list means only that this won’t be happening this year. The supervisors of elections will not be asked to purge any voters based on a list. Of course, they still have the authority to de-register anyone who does have a felony record, and it is easy to check any particular person’s record with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s online database. Anyone can do it. Now, if some felons slip through the cracks and do manage to register and vote – would that open the door to litigation? Only if Bush loses this state, and it’s by a very close count, and the Republicans file suit to have some votes thrown out because felons cast them. Do you really think that, after all this fuss over the whole issue, and with the sores from the 2000 election still smarting four years later, the Pubbies would resort to that? ---
**Author:** ![laigle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ce7236/32.png) [@laigle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/laigle)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2004, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/31 "2004-07-12T21:58:00Z")
Well, that answers the question of whether the list was illegal and politically motivated. As soon as it came under public scrutiny Jeb’s thug squad went crawling back under their rock ASAP. Wonder what excuses we’ll hear about why this was actually legitimate last time around, and how the 2000 election wasn’t rigged. ---
**Author:** ![furt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/439d5e/32.png) [@furt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furt)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2004, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/32 "2004-07-13T00:46:32Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I’ve never heard of an instance of someone taking such an oath falsely – you would have to be pretty rash, since that would be perjury, a crime in its own right and a violation of your probation, if you’re on probation. I know someone – know him reeeel well in fact – who registered and voted without incident in Florida in 2000, not knowing that he had been convicted in abstentia of a felony in another state. It ain’t like they check the FBI database. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2004, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/33 "2004-07-13T02:06:47Z")
> [@furt](#): > > I know someone – know him reeeel well in fact – who registered and voted without incident in Florida in 2000, not knowing that he had been convicted in abstentia of a felony in another state. It ain’t like they check the FBI database. If it happened as you’re describing, then your friend was not committing perjury, because he was not aware of his conviction. But most felons are very aware. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2004, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/34 "2004-07-13T15:14:02Z")
Here’s an update from today’s _St. Petersburg Times:_ [http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/13/State/Many\_felons\_likely\_to.shtml](http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/13/State/Many_felons_likely_to.shtml) > [@](#): > > Thousands of felons will likely cast ballots this fall now that Florida abandoned a flawed statewide list of potential felons who might be registered voters. > > The prospect concerns Gov. Jeb Bush. > > “There are a lot of people who shouldn’t be voting who are and that will continue on this year, just as it has in the past,” he predicted Monday. > > After scrapping a flawed list of more than 47,000 potential felons Saturday, state elections officials have no plans to create another list this year. The challenge of identifying felons and removing them from the voting rolls now falls entirely on county election supervisors. They say they will continue to weed out felons by relying on county court records as they have for decades, a process that fails to catch thousands of felons in Florida’s transient population. > > \ > > Losing the state list didn’t faze local elections officials. > > “I didn’t have a spasm with any of this,” Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson said. “We just continued to do our work and we’ll keep on continuing our work.” > > Local elections officials regularly comb criminal court records, a longstanding method. Hillsborough County, for example, has booted 688 felons off the voter rolls this year. Pinellas has ousted about 600. > > Attorney General Charlie Crist even questioned the need for a state list of felons. The 2002 election ran just fine without one, he said. > > \ > > The current approach grew out of a 1997 political scandal over a race between Joe Carollo and incumbent Miami Mayor Xavier Suarez. Carollo won at the polls but lost in the absentee ballot count, so he sued. > > A two-week trial produced evidence of forged ballots, improperly witnessed ballots, even one vote cast by a dead man. The courts tossed out all 4,500 absentee ballots, handing Carollo the victory. > > The Miami Herald found that 105 felons had been allowed to cast ballots. State lawmakers concluded that county elections officials could not be trusted, so they passed a law requiring state elections officials come up with a list of felons. > > “I think the motive was good,” said Jack Latvala, a former Republican state senator from Palm Harbor who sponsored the 1998 law. “The implementation maybe hasn’t been as good as it should have been.” > > State officials spent $4-million hiring a private company to generate lists of potential duplicate registrants, dead people and felons. > > They told the company to use very broad search terms, which led to thousands of incorrect names winding up on the list for the 2000 presidential election. Meanwhile, felons who were not screened out still got to cast ballots in that election, in which George Bush beat Al Gore by 537 votes to take Florida - and thus win the Electoral College vote while losing the popular vote. > > \ > > After 2000, the Legislature told the Division of Elections to produce a new list, preferably with the help of the county elections supervisors and court clerks. But state elections officials spurned the help of county officials - even though the court clerks already had a statewide computer system set up for child support collection that could have been converted for use with voter roll checks, said Ron Labasky, an attorney for the Florida Association of Supervisors of Elections. ---
**Author:** ![presidebt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/c37758/32.png) [@presidebt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/presidebt)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2004, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/35 "2004-07-16T03:12:39Z")
> [@mack](#): > > Something along those lines might have happened. Thanks for the explanation, mack. Sorry I missed your earlier post Fear Itself. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2004, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/36 "2004-07-16T03:54:49Z")
In his daoi;y column in the _St. Petersburg Tmes_ today ([http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/15/Columns/The\_excuses\_are\_scatt.shtml](http://www.sptimes.com/2004/07/15/Columns/The_excuses_are_scatt.shtml)), columnist Howard Troxler noted that the state spent $2 million to develop this years felons list (most of it paid to Accenture, a consulting firm with close ties to the Florida Republican Party). And, when several Florida newspapers sued for access to the list, the state spent another $125,000 in court, trying to keep it secret. And then when access finally was permitted, the state was so embarassed by the presence of felons who had in fact had their rights restored, and the curious absence of Hispanics, that they had to scrap it entirely – as related above. So Governor Bush has just wasted a huge pile of our tax money in a clumsy, dishonest, and ultimately futile attempt to fix the election for his brother. I don’t think the angry smiley :mad: adequately conveys my feelings here. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2004, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/37 "2004-07-16T04:18:21Z")
[This isn’t over until Ashcroft sings:](http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&e=3&u=/nm/20040715/pl_nm/campaign_florida_dc) > [@](#): > > In a hearing on the illegal disenfranchisement of alleged felons in Florida, commissioners accused state officials of “extraordinary negligence” in drawing up a list of 48,000 people to be purged from voter rolls, most of them because they may once have committed a crime. > “They have engaged in negligence at best and something worse at worst,” said Mary Frances Berry, chairperson of the commission, an independent bipartisan body whose members are appointed by the President and Congress. > She said **the commission would ask the Justice Department to investigate the matter.** ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2004, 4:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/38 "2004-07-16T04:40:39Z")
> [@](#): > > She said the commission would ask the Justice Department to investigate the matter. yeah, that Bush Justice Dept. gonna move real hard and fast on THIS case. ---
**Author:** ![Martiju](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e8c25b/32.png) [@Martiju](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martiju)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2004, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/39 "2004-07-16T11:43:00Z")
I could probably google on this - but I figure it’s relevant to a discussion here anyway: Is it the case then, that people who have been convicted of a crime but have been subsequently released from prison cannot vote (or are these felons who have had a non-custodial sentence)? I ask, because there seems something odd to me about restricting democratic freedoms to people who have served the punishment for their crimes. I’d welcome some clarification and/or indications of the reasoning. ---
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2004, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188/40 "2004-07-16T13:29:15Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Now, if some felons slip through the cracks and do manage to register and vote – would that open the door to litigation? Only if Bush loses this state, and it’s by a very close count, and the Republicans file suit to have some votes thrown out because felons cast them. Do you really think that, after all this fuss over the whole issue, and with the sores from the 2000 election still smarting four years later, the Pubbies would resort to that? If that is all that stands between Bush/Cheney and reelection? Damn right they would. After all, it worked the first time, didn’t it? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/it-couldnt-happen-again-in-florida-could-it/254188.md?page=3)