State: 1,600 ex-felons eligible to vote (Florida)

[Judi Lynn]

Posted on Thu, Jul. 08, 2004

State: 1,600 ex-felons eligible to vote

Florida election officials abandoned a controversial plan forcing 1,600 former felons to reregister to vote before November's election -- or risk losing their voting rights.

BY DEBBIE CENZIPER AND ERIKA BOLSTAD

[e-mail]


FIRST 2 GRAFS NEW

The Florida Division of Elections did an about-face Wednesday, acknowledging that 1,600 former felons whose voting rights had been restored should be allowed to vote.

The Herald reported last week that the 1,600 were among more than 2,100 felons who remained on the state's list of potentially ineligible voters even though they had regained the right to vote.

State officials initially insisted they were simply following Florida law by including the 1,647, each of whom had registered to vote before their civil rights had been restored. County elections supervisors were directed to contact each voter and have them reregister before the November election -- or face removal from the voting rolls.

Yet the Department of State -- whose secretary, Glenda Hood, reports to Gov. Jeb Bush -- backtracked on the issue.
(snip/...)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/9102681.htm
(Free registration required)

[Robbien]

1. In this felon purge, only 20% were true felons not able to vote?

When this story first came out, wasn't it Glenda Hood's recommendation that everyone just wait until the actual election day to see if they were on the eligible list?

I hope those 1600 people are good and pissed and motivated to vote in November.

[liberalmuse]

2. What is the big deal?

Will the world stop spinning if an ex-felon (the operative word here being 'EX') gets to vote? Oh yeah, that's right--most ex-felons vote Democrat, because rich, white pubbies rarely get sent to jail.

This is just despicable. The word, 'purge' is despicable when applied to human beings.

[gatlingforme]

5. I guess it's a big deal for someone being denied their right to

vote. "ex-felon" is still a person with rights as you do.

[liberalmuse]

6. That's kind of what I was saying...

'What's the big deal?' is the question I ask to Jeb and his thugs in Florida who think it is vital to spend millions of dollars ensuring, god forbid, that not a single ex-felon in Florida, or from any other state, is able to vote. I think that the 'ex-felon' law should be repealed in all states. Once you've served your time, you should have all your rights as a U.S. citizen restored.

I apologize for not being more clear about the point I was trying to make!

[JayS]

9. Florida HAS a way for ex-felons to regain the right to vote but...

...for some reason the emphasis by the Democratic "leadership" is on bitching and moaning about how unfair everything is. This should have been dealt with years ago but for some reason has not been. Start the clemency process now and force Jeb's hand at denying thousands of applications. Those that are on the list in error can certainly get that fixed. If I remember correctly, you can still vote provisionally in Florida if there is some question about your voting status. Absentee voting would be a good option to use also.

[Mithras61]

10. Re: provisional voting

Provisional voting sounds good, but historically has been denied to any person appearing on the "purge" lists. The problem is that this list has approximately the same error rate as the ones used in 2000 and 2002, and the reason that Dems are raising hell about it is that only about 5% of the people on the list actually belong there. The remainder are people with partial name matches, often with no other coroborating factor included. In many cases what you have is a first name-last name match with no middle name/initial, address, birthdate, SSN, or other information to match up the purgee withthe felon.

Additionally, many of the people on the lists are people who have been convicted of a felony and served time in states where they did NOT loose their right to vote when they committed the felony (like NY), so Florida doesn't have the right to take away their ability to cast a ballot. They have been doing this trick for several election cycles, have been sued and lost(yes, lost in Court), and CONTINUE to do it! The basic game is "you're a felon, so you don't have a right to vote unless you can prove your right to vote has been restored," but in cases of ex-felons from states that don't take away voting rights of ex-felons, there is no way to prove this, since the state never abridged their right to vote (and therefore has no way to document restoration of the right that was never taken away!).

[JayS]

11. Isn't Florida one of the states that counts a felony committed...

...in another state the same as if the felony were committed within the state. I have a good government site somewhere that lists the voter requirements of every state but can't find it at the moment.

I am sure that the list has a massive error rate...as it is a government list. :)

People who question their status should act now to make sure they can vote come November. I don't have too much sympathy for them until they at least try. It is kind of like complaining that you didn't win the lottery even though you never bought a ticket.

[Mithras61]

13. Can't do that under Federal law...

Rights granted by one state cannot be taken away by a state that has no interest. That is, the felony wasn't committed in FL, so if the state in which it WAS committed didn't take away the ex-felons rights, then FL can't either.

It's different if the state in which the felony/conviction took place DOES take away their voting rights, but in far too many cases in this list, that isn't what's happening. In fact, some of the states that have been used for this don't abridge the rights of the felon to vote, even while serving time! How can Florida take away this ex-felon's right to vote if the state with the vested interest didn't?

You need to check out "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" by Greg Palast. He lays this all out with the appropriate citations and case law.

Edited to add:

Oh, and by the way, DBT (the creator of the list) had the list returned by the FL Department of Elections becauseit "didn't have enough names" on it, and was instructed to use much looser criteria to create the "official" list. Keep in mind that MANY of the people on the list were "convicted" of felonies in the 2006 - 2012 time frame...

[JayS]

15. I couldn't find the website that I wanted but this looks like what...

...I read earlier. Does this make any sense?


From: http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:ADTUwMj-DWYJ:www.usdoj.gov/crt/restorevote/Florida.pdf+florida+felon+voting+.gov&hl=en

What if I was convicted in another state? The same rules apply for Florida voters even if the conviction occurred in another state. If you were convicted of a crime that would be a felony in the state of Florida, you may not vote in Florida unless your civil rights have been restored. The Governor of Florida cannot issue a pardon for a conviction from another state’s court, but he can restore your Florida voting rights.

[Mithras61]

16. The key part...

you may not vote in Florida unless your civil rights have been restored.

This is the key part of the phrase. You see, rights that haven't been revoked can't be restored, so FL doesn't have the right to revoke their voting rights. At least, this is what FL's courts have held.

[JayS]

17. Well, isn't that just plain odd. It makes sense in a way though. I...

...hope the last part of that paragraph will apply in either case. That website was from 2000 also. I hope things have changed since then...but somehow I doubt it.



The Governor of Florida cannot issue a pardon for a conviction from another state’s court, but he can restore your Florida voting rights.

[Mithras61]

18. It still applies, but...

only for states that revoke rights and don't automatically restore them (I think there are a whole 6 states that this is the case, and FL is one of them).

But don't hold your breath. Jebthro only restores voting rights for convicted felons that can be counted on to vote R.

[JayS]

19. I wonder what Jebbie would do if he got 40,000 requests for...

...clemency and 2,500 correction notices all at one time. Think he would have the moxy (and sheer lunacy) to deny all of them? :)

[Mithras61]

21. Simple...

He'd deny he ever received the majority of them, or they would somehow not find their way to his desk, or he wouldn't have time to act on all of them, or...

You get the picture. As I've said before, it isn't about a clean removal of legitimately excluded ex-felons, it's about removing as many Dem voters as possible from the roles, and preferably as close to the election as possible so there isn't time to file a complaint or counterclaim, and (more importantly) for there to be anything that the removed person can do to get reinstated in time for the election. This includes refusal of provisional ballots at the polls, which is only one of the documented abuses in Florida 2000 and 2002.

[JayS]

23. I guess they will still have to go through the formalities no...

...matter what, but they had better CC all applications to the NAACP, ACLU, and other civil rights groups. Might as well even CC the NRA while they are at it. :)

[Mithras61]

24. The only formalities that are likely to help involve...

the removal of the corruption in Tallahassee. So long as Jebthro is in charge there, they're wasting their time trying to get their voting rights restored.

The courts have ordered Jebthro & the FL Dept. of Elections to stop using the arrest records (not conviction, arrest!). The courts have ordered them to reinstate all people that have been illegally removed and they have done nothing. The courts have ordered them to stop using felony records from states that automatically reinstate voting rights to purge their voting lists, and they keep using these lists. Florida corruption is endemic, but this is far worse that anything from B.J. (Before Jebthro).

The only solution I can see is to force him out of office, but that becomes increasingly difficult as he continues to play illegal games with the voter roles and disenfranchising thousands of voters, of whom an estimated 85% are Dem voters.

[JayS]

25. Things sound more than a little screwed up over there. So...

...where is everybody with the power to get this taken care of?

[Mithras61]

26. "Everybody"

appears to be the electorate, and Jebthro is doing his dead level best to make sure they CAN'T do it...

[JayS]

27. I guess voting rights for ex-felons is not something that gets...

...many people riled up, perhaps not even the ex-felons themselves.

[soup]

14. There's also the fact that the new voter purge list

is based on arrest records. (yes, I have cites, but I'll have to dig.)

Arrest records, not conviction records or prison records or release records.

We checked the newly released list for our son's name. Based solely on arrest records, there was a fear that his name would be on the list.

Had his name erroneously been on the list - well, I don't want to go there, because it wasn't-

BUT- Is this list continuously updated? Could his name still appear on one released this month or next? I need to call and find out.

His arrest centered on Florida not updating it's DMV computer records that the police have access to when they run a driver's license check. His license came through as suspended, so they hauled him off to jail. Felony driving on a suspended license. Cost him several hours in jail, and a court appearance to prove his license had been reinstated 2 months before he was arrested. Case dismissed.

So, there is an arrest record. Have his voting rights been cleared by the county Supervisor of Elections yet? Or, is it still out there on some slow moving government cog? How long does the cycle take to turn? Time to get on the phone. I need some answers.

Ah, Florida.

-----
here's a snip from one article about the use of arrest records:

Jenny Nash, a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood, who oversees the sate elections office, said the list will be drawn exclusively from Florida arrests. Election supervisors will retrieve the data on a secure site over the Internet, compare names with voter rolls and the clerk of court before they send a registered letter to the voter notifying them they are about to be purged.

If a voter thinks a mistake has been made, he can contact a local elections office to appeal.
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/05/07/State/System_to_clean_up_vo.shtml

[cthrumatrix]

3. shine more light on these florida "evil doers in govt"... Jeb is involved

and was in 2000

[bushisanidiot]

4. They should re-register anyway and should NOT wait until election day

to find out things got screwed up.

The RNC is COUNTING on mass confusion to once again give them the election..

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

7. 1600 down.

80,000 to go.

[soup]

8. Good news with a catch.

Florida - geesh -

from the article:

"Another 500 voters who have won clemency remain on the list, for instance."

WHY?

and this little 'gem':

State Rep. Chris Smith, a Democrat, represents the neighborhood hardest hit by the new list. In the African-American core of central Fort Lauderdale, The Herald found the highest concentration of voters who had their rights restored but remained on the state's list.

No surprise there, hey? and Even without a map or knowledge of the neighborhood, I'd also wager that central Fort Lauderdale is not an area of great wealth with top-notch attorneys lining up to represent and fight for their clients' freedom in the first place.

edit to add apostrophe.

[geek tragedy]

12. God bless Sunshine laws

Vampires like the Bush clan tend to shrink away from the light of truth.

[Shakespeare]

20. THIS IS A DISTRACTION! The real story is about the NON-felons on the list!

Good lord...I suppose I should be grateful it's getting any coverage at all, but they're missing the real crime of putting thousands on the purge list who were never convicted of any crime, simply because there are some similarities in the names.

:argh:

[wish_I_could_vote]

22. I'm not holding my breath

LAKELAND -- Like many of her peers, Polk Elections Supervisor Lori Edwards is not thrilled with a state directive to review lists of potential felons whose voting rights are in question.

Edwards said she has yet to begin her review, citing a lack of urgency.

"This job could easily eat up a good portion of our staff, our energies, time and attention," she said, "and I refuse to let that happen."

http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040707/NEWS/407070335/1286/ELECTIONS

a lack of urgency???? what the hell would make this seem urgent?