State officials defend list of felon voters

By Bob Mahlburg and John Maines | Tallahassee Bureau
Posted July 3, 2004

TALLAHASSEE State elections officials Friday angrily defended the integrity of their list of nearly 48,000 "potential felons" who could be purged from the voting rolls amid mounting evidence that thousands of names were put on the list by mistake.

And elections supervisors throughout the state many of whom reported being inundated with calls from concerned voters said they were moving carefully to check out every name on the list. Many said they didn't expect to finish before the August primaries or even the November general election.

"It's easier for a judge to tell me somebody shouldn't have voted than it is for the judge to say I should have let so-and-so vote," said Orange County Supervisor of Elections Bill Cowles. "That's why the supervisors are going to go very slow in doing their research."

A computer analysis by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and the Orlando Sentinel that compared the names on the Elections Division list with a list of more than 180,000 names of convicted felons who have had their voting rights restored showed more than 2,000 names appearing on both lists. Of those, more than 350 were from the seven-county Central Florida area.

An exact comparison of the two lists is not possible because there are no positive identifiers, such as Social Security numbers, in either list. And the list of those who have had their voting rights restored, provided by the state Office of Executive Clemency, does not include home addresses or cities.

However, 2,075 Floridians on the clemency list have the same first name, last name, middle initial and date of birth as those in the list of active voters whose names are slated for deletion from the voter rolls. A similar analysis by The Miami Herald came up with 2,119 matches.

Glenda Hood, the former Orlando mayor who became secretary of state last year, issued a statement defending her Election Division's list as a document "rigorously reviewed by our Supervisors of Elections, and by the Division of Elections. The Division is in regular contact with the Office of Executive Clemency, FDLE, and the Department of Corrections updating the database daily to provide the most up-to-date information."

She said her office would arrange a "tutorial" on the voter database for reporters next week.

Under state law, county election officials are required to verify the names of suspected felons, send registered letters notifying them that they are being ped from voter rolls and then advertise names in a local newspaper if they don't respond.

The Sentinel computer analysis showed 353 names from Central Florida 17 percent of the statewide total who matched both the list of potential felons and the clemency list by full name, including middle initial, and age. Of those, 51 were from Brevard, 20 from Lake, 112 from Orange, 5 from Osceola, 59 from Polk, 27 from Seminole and 79 from Volusia.

One of them was Leigh McEachern, a former chief deputy in the Orange County Sheriff's Office, who was convicted in 1980 of stealing $200,000 from the agency. But after he served nearly three years in prison, his civil rights were restored in 1988. Since then, he has been a Democratic precinct committeeman, run unsuccessfully for the state Legislature and, he said, voted in each and every election.

McEachern even got a concealed-weapons permit last year. To do that, he had to show the Florida Department of Law Enforcement that his civil rights had been restored. But he made the list anyway.

"I really think that loss of the voting privilege is counterproductive to the rehabilitation process," he said. "Otherwise, it's a life sentence."

It's quite possible there are thousands more people like McEachern on the Elections Division list, according to the computer analysis of the felon and clemency lists. If the middle initial or middle name is not included as part of the match because it is missing from one or both of the lists, the number of matches grows to 5,106 registered voters.

This list includes 118 in Brevard, 74 in Lake, 262 in Orange, 30 in Osceola, 144 in Polk, 61 in Seminole and 186 in Volusia.

The lists do not show how many of the voters are no longer in Florida or have died. Cowles said a "quick review" of the approximately 2,100 names of Orange County voters on the felon list showed that about a quarter had moved away.

State officials released the database containing the names after Leon County Circuit Judge Nikki Clark declared unconstitutional a state law that had limited release of the names.

Critics had 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.

Democrats and liberal-leaning interest groups were quick to take issue Friday with Hood and Republican Gov. Jeb Bush.

For instance, Hood insisted in a statement Friday that even felons who win back their voting rights must re-register in order to again vote under Florida law. But attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union on Friday blasted that statement. "Once they've been given clemency and made whole citizens, forcing them to re-register is a violation of federal civil-rights law," said ACLU of Florida Executive Director Howard Simon.

U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, D-Miami, said, "This happened in 2000 and it's happening again in 2004. There are only two things that those two things have in common the state of Florida and the president's brother is the governor. This is a national embarrassment."

Complaints about the felon match names also have rekindled debate about the state's policy of forcing felons to go through a lengthy process to get their voting rights restored. Florida is one of only six states that do not automatically restore civil rights to prisoners who finish their sentences.

Bush has said the Florida Constitution requires felons to apply to restore their rights, but legal experts say Bush could choose to end the practice any time he desires.