http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/10/national/10elect.html

June 10, 2004

Policy on Felons and Voting Is Still Unclear in Florida

By Abby Goodnough

KEY WEST, Fla., June 9 - County elections supervisors peppered state officials on Wednesday with questions about purging felons from their voter rolls, suggesting at a meeting here that numerous attempts to clarify Florida's policy had not ended confusion on the issue.

At the weeklong gathering, the supervisors have focused on how to sift through a state-compiled list of suspected felons to determine which ones are not eligible to vote. Florida is one of the few states where felons lose their right to vote and must go through multiple steps to regain it after serving their time.

The answer to at least one crucial question remained unclear: whether elections supervisors are obligated to find out if felons convicted in other states have had their rights restored. One state elections official suggested they should be, but Ed Kast, the departing chief of elections, later told reporters that the supervisors did not need to go out of their way to seek the information.

In 2000, the state purged an unknown number of legal voters from the rolls after wrongly identifying them as felons. The disenfranchised included people who had committed crimes elsewhere but had had their voting rights restored in those other states before moving here. Many states automatically restore voting rights after felons complete their sentences.

Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, told the supervisors it was illegal to deny anyone the right to vote based on an out-of-state conviction. In a brief presentation, Mr. Simon also told the 67 supervisors that they should focus on restoring the voting rights of people who were incorrectly purged from the rolls in 2000.

But some supervisors said they were overwhelmed with investigating a new list of possible felons, as the state requires, and determining which should be disenfranchised.

Jeffrey Long of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement said a new Web site would help the supervisors verify convictions. County clerks are also supposed to help with the task, but several supervisors said clerks had been unhelpful. In a change from 2000, the supervisors have agreed to get proof of convictions, like copies of judgments, before notifying felons that they will be purged.

"I'm not sending any letters out until I have a piece of paper in my hand saying that's the way it is," said Pat Hollarn, the elections supervisor in Okaloosa County. "I'll keep checking and checking and checking."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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