FL - About 1,800 (new) Felons Removed From Voter Rolls In 39 Counties

FL - About 1,800 (new) Felons Removed From Voter Rolls In 39 Counties

MIAMI -- About 1,800 new felons were removed from Florida election rolls since a controversial state database of ineligible voters was scrapped in July because it was flawed, but election officials aren't reviewing old records to see if they may have missed anyone.

When the state bowed to criticism and discarded the flawed list of 48,000 potentially ineligible voters, local election officials continued what they had been doing for years -- examining court records each month for new names to purge from voting rolls. They weren't required to make any other checks.

"We don't have the time or personnel to go back five years and check on the felony status of a voter," said Brenda Renfore, executive administrator for Escambia County elections. The county has purged 37 new felons from its rolls since July.

Florida is one of only a handful of states that do not automatically restore voting rights to convicted felons when they complete their sentence. The purge by election officials has been a hot-button issue since the 2000 presidential election, in which many citizens discovered at the polls they weren't allowed to vote.

A company hired to identify ineligible voters before that election produced an error-filled list and elections supervisors removed voters without verifying its accuracy. The state hired a new contractor to create another list that election supervisors were to use this year to screen felons whose voting rights weren't restored. That list was scrapped after revelations it had a flaw that excluded Hispanic felons.

The Associated Press surveyed counties on their efforts to purge ineligible voters and received responses from 48 of the state's 67 counties. Nine had not removed any voters from their rolls since the list was tossed, including Miami-Dade, the second-largest county with more than one million registered voters.

"We follow the law, but within whatever flexibility we have, we always do whatever we can do to err on the side of the voter and ensure that our electorate is fully enfranchised," said Seth Kaplan, a spokesman for county's elections office. "We won't put someone in felon status until we can verify that they haven't received clemency."

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