Poll: Voters want their records kept private

The headline goes

By Bill Cotterell

DEMOCRAT POLITICAL EDITOR

Florida voters overwhelmingly oppose the opening of voter-registration records, according to a poll released Thursday. But Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho said the pollsters asked the question wrong.

CNN, the Tallahassee Democrat, U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and other parties have filed suit in Leon County Circuit Court challenging the state law that forbids general release of a list of people who may be stricken from the voter rolls because they're believed to be felons. The state Division of Elections sent lists of possible felons to all 67 counties for elections supervisors to verify names.

The statewide survey of 444 registered voters indicated that 71 percent think the rolls should remain exempt from being publicly distributed or copied. Only 18 percent of those surveyed by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. said the records should be open, and 11 percent were undecided.

"These results show voters sharply at odds with media outlets who argue there is a compelling public need to make voter information public, including a state list of possible felons who are prohibited by law from voting in the state," said Brad Coker, director of the poll.

The survey was conducted last week for Ron Sachs Communications of Tallahassee, which added the voter-registration question on a poll the public-relations company had commissioned on economic issues. The poll's margin of error was 4.7 percent.

After being told that the law allows only political parties and campaigns to obtain the registration lists, voters in the survey were asked, "Do you feel access to personal voter information should or should not be made available to other interests, including the media and businesses?"

Sancho, who opposes use of the "felon purge" lists provided by the state, said the question was "not framed in a neutral manner." He said different results could have resulted from a different phrasing of the question.

"I think it skews the results when you start putting words like 'personal information' in there and 'businesses,' because people think their names and addresses will be sold," Sancho said. "I think everyone opposes commercial use of this information.

"But I'd like to see what the poll would say if they asked, 'The state is not releasing a felon-voter list that has proved inaccurate in the past. ... Should the public be allowed to have free access to this list?'"

However, Coker said the question was fairly presented.

"The question should be whether or not the state makes the information available," he said. "In voters' minds, they see this as a privacy issue."