csua.org/u/986 -> lawandpolitics.blogspot.com/2004_09_01_lawandpolitics_archive.html#109625746958118590
And after reading his criticism that the blogosphere is becoming too timid to go where the mainstream media will not, it inspired me to return to a topic that I think has gotten far too little attention in both the mainstream press and the blogosphere - the odd "glitches" that resulted in the exclusion of Hispanics from Florida purged-felons voting list. I'm writing in the hopes that the blogosphere - or even a journalist or columnist - might revisit this issue. And it's quite possible that it was a flagrant violation of the Voting Rights Act that is getting swept under the rug.
Anyway, in order to avoid the debacle in 2000 in which many black non-felons were denied the right the vote because they shared the same name as a felon, Florida created an updated felon list, with the assistance of a private company. Several local newspapers and CNN sued to get the state to release the list after state officials refused to do so. Finally, on July 1 of this year, a judge ordered it to be released.
from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune (or "SHT") discovered something rather odd: there were almost no Hispanic names on the list. There were lots of African-Americans, but only 61 Hispanics on a list of 48,000 - which is one-tenth of one percent. Hispanics make up about 17% of the population in Florida - and 11% of the prison population. Oh yeah, and they tend to vote Republican - especially the Cuban-Americans. After initially denying any error, the state officials conceded that they had overlooked a "glitch" that resulted in the exclusion of Hispanic voters from the list. Under pressure, they scrapped the list (which is bad news for Bush). That's as far as I got when I wrote about this issue earlier in the summer. I was studying for the bar, so I never went back to see what the alleged "glitch" was. It will take some investigative journalism - or a criminal investigation - to find out. It is possible that it was an honest mistake, though I doubt it. Below, I'll provide the official explanation, and then explain why I'm skeptical of it.
The official explanation deals with discrepancies in the way race is recorded by the Florida election offices and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE). The former allows registered voters to include the designation "Hispanic" as their race. The FDLE, however, does not include this category and classifies all Hispanics as "whites."
felon purge list worked was that it matched names taken from the voter registration lists with names from the list of felons. To qualify as a "match" (and thus be purged), there had to be a perfect match between two individuals' name, gender, date of birth, Social Security number, and race. If any one of these did not match, the individual was not included. This essentially eliminated Hispanics from the purge list because the individual's "race" category would almost always be different on the two lists ("white" versus "Hispanic").
means that 28,000 Democrats who might have been banned from voting can cast their vote in November. By comparison, the list contained only 9,500 registered Republicans. The second, and most critical issue in this controversy, is whether the Florida election officials knew beforehand that including race within the "match" criteria would create problems with the list. The officials, of course, denied knowing about the problem. But the SHT reporters dug deeper and found that several people involved did in fact know about this precise problem well before the list was created. I'm not sure why the national media isn't devoting more attention to what these two reporters have found.
here): As far back as 1997, state election officials knew that using race to create a felon voter purge list could mean Hispanics wouldn't be included in the purge, the Herald-Tribune has learned. Elections officials studied the race issue for the purge conducted before the 2000 election, and again in 2001 as they developed the latest version of the list designed to keep felons from voting.
had absolutely no knowledge before recalling the list," Department of State spokesperson Nicole de Lara said. De Lara pointed out that Hood was not in office when the list was designed and that she has called for an audit of what led to the Hispanic flaw. Although Hood took office after the list was designed, many of her employees worked on the current list and the one used in 2000. Election officials were aware of matching difficulties involving Hispanic felons when they worked with DBT, a private company that helped build the 2000 purge list. DBT, which was later bought by ChoicePoint, discussed the issue with data experts in the secretary of state's office in late 1997 or early 1998, ChoicePoint spokesman Chuck Jones said. ChoicePoint and state officials analyzed the data together and recognized that using race would create an inaccurate list, he said. "It was not part of the criteria because most of the data sets didn't support matching race," Jones said. Jones cited Janet Modrow as one of the secretary of state employees who would have known about the race problem. Modrow also played a central role in developing the latest purge list. Modrow told the Herald-Tribune on Friday she needed permission from a secretary of state spokesperson before she could answer a reporter's questions. Department of State records show that the issue of race came up again in October 2001, less than eight months before the unveiling of the Central Voter Database. That database of the state's registered voters was partly designed to allow election officials to identify felons who were registered to vote. Technical advisers charged with developing the database discussed race at the October meeting and concluded that Hispanic could not be used as a separate race category in creating the match, meeting minutes show. The minutes show that the committee planned to group Hispanics with whites for matching purposes. That step would have allowed Hispanics to be included in the felon list because Hispanics are reported in the white race categories in many voter registration databases and by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Chuck Smith, a Hillsborough County elections supervisor employee who served on the technical advisory committee, said he remembers a meeting where concerns about the use of race were raised. Smith said the concern came up because the committee knew that voters couldn't report their race as Hispanic in most counties before 1994." Prior to 1994, everybody was considered to be white or black," Smith said. Paul Craft, voting systems chief with the Division of Elections, said he also remembers discussing concerns over relying on race to match felons and voters. But Craft said he forgot to mention those concerns to Clay Roberts, his boss at the time. Roberts, the elections chief in 2002, made a decision that ultimately created the data flaw that omitted Hispanics. In May 2002, just days before the voter database was unveiled, Roberts ordered a rewrite of the matching procedures. He insisted that a registered voter's race match exactly with someone in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement's database. Because the FDLE classifies Hispanics as white, Roberts' decision virtually ensured Hispanics would be excluded from the felon list. Clay Roberts said Monday that he did not remember being at a meeting where the issue was addressed, but that he "vaguely" remembers there being some concerns about how race was kept in voter registration records before 1994. I mean, it's not like issues of race and disenfranchisement had come up in the past few years in the context of a presidential election. Clay Roberts was the Division of Elections Director at the time the list was assembled, and he was appointed by Jeb Bush.
Roberts stopped it and instructed them to create a more strict matching process that included race. To be fair, this was during litigation stemming from the 2000 debacle and perhaps Roberts wanted to be extra careful.
"Any change to the application is high risk at this late date, even more so a change like this that has a significant impact on such a crucial part of the process," wrote Meg McLaugh...
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