Voter Purge Lists in Florida Still Contain Inaccurate Information
Feature Story by civilrights.org staff - 8/10/2004
Floridian Sam Heyward has been voting in presidential elections for years. As a black man voting in a contentious state in the upcoming November election, he knows his vote is exceedingly important. But Heyward found out in the last election that his vote was not counted, and has not been counted for more than a decade.Convicted of a felony and briefly incarcerated in 1981, Heyward was informed that his voting rights were restored in 1986, years after release. His vote was not counted in the 2000 election.
On July 15, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held a hearing to determine why eligible voters are still incorrectly purged from voter lists in Florida. Testifying before the Commission, Ralph G. Neas, President of People For the American Way (PFAW), echoed Heyward's remarks.
"Mr. Heyward's case was by no means isolated. In fact, the Miami Herald found more than 2,100 people on the list who had received clemency and in fact had every right to vote under state law," Neas said.
Even more remarkable to some were the findings of investigative reporter and author George Palast, who also testified at the hearing. Palast said he discovered that some voters on the purge list were convicted in 2007, which he termed "future felons." In addition, 4,000 purged voters had blank conviction dates — providing no verification of a felony.
To demonstrate further injustice, Palast said that more than half of the voters on the purge list were African Americans, and he insisted that this was a pointed effort to undermine the strength of the African-American vote.
Voting rights advocates continue to call for immediate updates of the voter purge lists. Moreover, advocates have been urging states to abide by the Help America Vote Act requirement to notify a purged voter of his or her status within 60 days of the election. Heyward received no such notification.
Updated Purge Lists
In the wake of the 2000 election controversy and the subsequent scrutiny centered on Florida, the state hired consulting firm Accenture to build computer systems that find duplicate names and felons on the voter rolls. Accenture compiled voter information from a number of different agencies, such as the Department of Motor Vehicles, and produced probable lists of voters.
Accenture's representative at the hearing, Meg McLaughlin, said the lists were not definitive and, ultimately, county officials would determine whether to accept or reject them.
Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ian Sancho said that the government's databases are still not updated, and therefore affect the validity of the voter lists.
"The list is worse this year," Sancho said, referring to the voter rolls produced by Accenture.
After Sancho's testimony, Mary Frances Berry, Chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, remarked "garbage in, garbage out." She pressed McLaughlin on how Accenture, knowing that the government databases were not updated, could continue to produce voter lists from incomplete sources.
Sancho warns that while he refused to use the initial voter list because it was incomplete, other county supervisors might not do the same.
