Election 2004

Company: State knew about felons list problems

The company that helped create the list says state elections officials knew about the problems.

SARASOTA - State election officials knew since at least 1998 that a recently scrapped felons list designed to clear convicted felons from voter rolls would have a glitch and exclude Hispanics, according to a company that helped create the list.

Private company DBT helped build the felons list for the 2000 election. DBT, which was later bought by ChoicePoint, discussed the difficulties involving Hispanic felons with experts in the secretary of state's office in late 1997 or early 1998, ChoicePoint spokesman Chuck Jones said Monday.

ChoicePoint and state officials analyzed the data together and realized that using race would create an inaccurate list because of the problems with Hispanics or Latinos, he said.

"We determined jointly that it was not reliable," Jones told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune for a story in Tuesday's editions.

Secretary of State Glenda Hood scrapped the list July 10 after it was reported that it contained few people identified as Hispanic. That was because when voters register in Florida, they can identify themselves as Hispanic. But the FDLE database has no Hispanic category. The FDLE list was compared to the voter rolls to determine who should be barred from voting, a move that left many Hispanic felons off the cross-check list.

"I recommended we pull the list and make it inactive so it's not being used," said Hood, who ordered an audit to find out how the situation came about and why it wasn't discovered earlier.

"I've asked them to turn it around as quickly as possible because I think it's important we put it to rest and get answers to those questions," Hood said Tuesday.

Although Hood took office after the list was designed, many of her employees worked on the current list and the one used in 2000, the newspaper reported.

Jones cited Janet Modrow as one of the state employees who would have known about the race problem. Modrow, who also played a central role in developing the latest felons list, told the newspaper that she couldn't comment, saying she first needed permission from Hood's office before she could answer questions.

Department of State records show that the issue of race came up again in an October 2001 meeting. Technical advisers concluded that Hispanic could not be used as a separate race category in creating the match, meeting minutes show.

Paul Craft, voting systems chief with the Division of Elections, said he recalled discussing concerns over relying on race to match felons and voters. But Craft said he forgot to mention those concerns to Clay Roberts, the elections chief in 2002.

In May 2002, just days before the voter database was unveiled, Roberts ordered a rewrite of the matching procedures.

He insisted that a registered voter's race match exactly with someone in the FDLE database. Because the FDLE classifies Hispanics as white, Roberts' decision meant voters who registered as Hispanics would be excluded from the felons list.

Roberts, who now works in the state attorney general's office, said Monday that he did not remember being at a meeting where the issue was addressed, but that he "vaguely" remembers there being some concerns about how race was kept in voter registration records.

Florida is one of a handful of states that does not automatically restore voting rights to convicted felons once they have completed their sentences.

In another development, a federal appeals court in Atlanta on Tuesday set aside a previous order issued by a three-judge panel granting a trial challenging the constitutionality of the state law. The full court has agreed to the state's request to reconsider the case, an option rarely granted.

Attorney Anita Earls, co-counsel for ex-felons suing the state, said she didn't think the two-paragraph order announcing the court's plans indicates favoritism toward the state. She said the court will specify the issues it wants to examine later when it sets a schedule for both sides to file court papers.

But Jacob DiPietre, spokesman for Gov. Jeb Bush, said, "The governor is pleased that the appeals court recognized that there are important legal principles that should be considered by all members of the court."

Attorney Charles Cooper, who represented Bush, said "obviously we're delighted" with the decision reopening appellate court review.

[Last modified July 20, 2004, 23:13:25]