Can we fix this now, please?
THOUSANDS WHO HAVE HAD THEIR VOTING RIGHTS RESTORED MAY REMAIN ON FLORIDA PURGE LISTS
Massive Discrepancies Revealed In Two Gov’t Clemency Lists
New York, NY -- Documents obtained from the State of Florida reveal that the state’s “felon match” list for purging voters may include many of 25,585 people whose voting rights have been restored through clemency grants or pardons. Unless corrective action is taken, those wrongly placed on the purge list will be unable to vote in this year’s presidential election.
The Florida Division of Elections (DOE) attempts to identify registered voters who should be taken off the rolls because of previous felony convictions, using criminal history data supplied by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. To avoid the disfranchisement of eligible voters, people with felony convictions who have been granted clemency and had their voting rights restored must be removed from that group; otherwise, their names may be wrongly purged from the voter rolls.
According to research by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, the Florida Division of Elections database identifies 145,823 individuals who have been granted clemency since 1964. Documents obtained from the Florida Office of Executive Clemency show a different – and larger – number of records of processed clemency cases and pardons over the same period, tallying 171,408 individuals. (To obtain the State of Florida documents and source data click here.)
“What explains DOE’s apparent undercount of people whose voting rights have been restored?” asks Jessie Allen, associate counsel at the Brennan Center. “If officials at the Division of Elections know of the larger tally of people who have regained their voting rights, they should explain why they are allowing these citizens to end up on the purge lists. On the other hand, if the Clemency Office’s tally comes as news to them, they need to deal with this problem in a hurry.”
