State releases names of 'potential felons' on voter purge list

By Bob Mahlburg, Gregory Lewis and Rafael A. Olmeda
Sun-Sentinel
Posted July 2 2004, 9:33 AM EDT

Florida election officials in Tallahassee on Thursday released the names of more than 47,000 "potential felons" who could be purged from voter rolls, but some of those included immediately protested they were listed by mistake and that they've been voting for years.

Herbert Maloy, 77, of Delray Beach, said he has been voting for decades, despite serving three months in jail for public drunkenness almost 40 years ago.

"Why am I on hold after all those years?" said Maloy, a Democrat who registered in 1976. "I just want my rights."

Edward G. Donohue, 79, of Davie, said he had his voting right restored 20 years ago in a face-to-face meeting with Gov. Claude Kirk. Donohue has been voting for the past 20 years and recently changed his party affiliation from Republican to Democrat.

"The election department has said nothing to me," he said. "The thing happened 35 years ago. It was a felony. I served a year and a half. I went before Gov. Kirk, and he restored my rights. There wasn't any paperwork. ... This is ridiculous."

Shanell Hutchins, 27, of Deerfield Beach, said she voted last year in the municipal elections. She is a registered Democrat.

"I don't see why I can't vote," she said. Hutchins pleaded guilty in April 2003 to driving with a suspended license, a third-degree felony. "I don't have a criminal background, and I pay taxes. Why can't I vote?"

She said she has not received anything indicating that she is on a potential voter purge list.

About a third of the names, 15,466, are from Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, where elections supervisors now face the task of vetting the list to make sure no one is wrongly deprived of the right to vote.

State officials provided the database after Leon County Circuit Judge Nikki Clark struck down a state law that limited the release of the names.

Critics demanded the list be made public as a way to ferret out mistakes, fearing a repeat of the flawed purge of thousands of voters before Florida's infamous 2000 election. George W. Bush eventually captured the White House with just 537 more Florida votes than Al Gore.

Civil rights groups and First Amendment advocates quickly heralded Clark's ruling.

"It's a historic day," proclaimed Reginald Mitchell, election director for Florida People For the American Way Foundation. Mitchell was first in line to get a copy of a computer disc containing the names, just ahead of a reporter and a representative of Holland & Knight, the law firm that sued to force the state to release the list.

State officials stressed that the names are only "potential felons" and expected local election supervisors to make sure voting rights are protected.

"Of course, there's going to be people on there who are not really felons," said Nicole de Lara, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood. "It's a potential list. Does it bother me? I'm sure there are other people like that on there. It's the beginning of the process, not the end. It's the job of the supervisors to go through the list."

County election officials are required to check the names, then advertise names of suspected felons in a local newspaper if they don't respond to registered letters notifying them that they are being ped from voter rolls. But many have expressed concerns about whether the work can be done in time for the fall vote.

Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore said the state list would make it easier to research voters flagged as alleged felons. Her office routinely makes those checks using a central computer database, but the process is tedious because the database displays individuals only.

"We still have to go through each individual, but at least we'll have a printout," LePore said. "It will at least give us a base to start with."

Gisela Salas, deputy to Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes, said last month that going through the list will be a long process. "No one will be taken off the list without complete verification," Salas said. "We want to be very careful not to remove anyone erroneously."

Of the 47,763 on the list, 28,025 are Democrats and 9,521 are Republican. Non-Hispanic whites accounted for 24,197, while non-Hispanic blacks numbered 22,084. Only 61 listed voters across the state identified themselves on their voter registration forms as Hispanic.

Pamela Burch Fort, executive director of the Broward County-based Committee to Restore Voter Dignity, said the organization believes the list wrongly contains the names of people with misdemeanor records who had rights restored in other states and people who should have been able to vote in 2000 but couldn't because they were purged.

Being able to examine the list is important because "for too many years, we've allowed a system to erratically disenfranchise good, earnest, hard-working citizens," Fort said. "There's no reason for that to occur. It's a system in which no one can follow the methodology. We don't know how people are placed on a list that keep them from exercise their basic rights to vote."

Staff Writers Jaime Hernandez, Linda Kleindiens, Dana Williams and Patty Pensa contributed to this report.