Scrubbed Voter Rolls Pioneered in Florida

There were many reasons why Al Gore lost Florida in 2000. One of the most important was a program to eliminate fellons and others from the voter rolls. There was nothing wrong with purging Florida fellons, but the program was found to make massive errors and it eliminated a disproportionate number of black voters. After the election, Florida Secretary of State spoke to out-of-state Republican gatherings, showing how it was done. When the Helping Americans Vote Act was passed, it carried provisions to fund more purges. When the American University voting commission published its report in 2005, it was clear that the Democrats on the commission had to endorse purges--even dishonest ones-- in return for paper trails for the new voting machines. A tough choice, but probably a necessary one.


The decision to purge illegal voters from the voter rolls were made before Katherine Harris became Secretary of State. Her predecessor, another Republican, hired a firm to do the job for $5,700. That operator was later fired, and an initial contract was given to a Georgia firm for a fee of $2,317,800. The successful contractor, Choice Point, has strong ties to the Republican party. The work was to be done by its DBT subsidiary, even though the FBUI had cancelled its data handling contract with it due to an officer of the firm’s criminal contacts. In 1998, JEB Bush and Katherine Harris set in motion the program to scrub the voter rolls of fraudulent votes, particularly felons and the dead. The program was unique in that they hired a private firm in Georgia with strong Republican Party ties to do the work. Eventually costing over $4,000,000 the program was carried out in haste, with few efforts to correct obvious errors. It resulted in unjustly disenfranchising thousands.

The computer program used by Database Technologies, Incorporated, eliminated people whose vital statistics were the same as those of known felons. In fact, the program sought possible felons rather than real felons. Of those purged from the rolls, at least 44% were African Americans. In that election, Blacks voted more than 90% fore, and Bush only won by 537 votes. The DBY contract specified that there would be "manual verification using telephone calls and statistical sampling." Sampling to verify the lists of name to be purged did not occur. The firm may been partly at fault, but the evidence is clear that the State of Florida repeatedly pressed it to produce larger and larger lists by suspending various safeguards.

DBT, concerned about acquiring a reputation for sloppy work, protested some of these instructions but ultimately complied. Former felons from other states were stripped of their right to vote even if their former states had restored to them the right to vote. There were two court rulings ordering the Jeb Bush to give the vote to people whose full civil rights had been restored in other states. Bush refused to obey the orders and insisted that these people pursue a cumbersome process to obtain Florida pardons. A letter from the governor’s office verified that this was the case, but the original copy later turned up missing, and an altered version of the original was found in the files. ABC reporter Dave Ruppe discovered the document switch, but the network refused to air the story.

There is no way to prove that program was designed for partisan purposes or to reduce the Black vote. Former convicts who came from states that restored voting rights to them were prevented from voting despite federal law on this point and a decision of the Florida Court of Appeals. They were told it was necessary to obtain clemency in Florida. When the legislature passed ballot reform in 2001, it left the door open for same abuses in the future.

A few counties refused to go forward with dishonest purges. The American University panel's report gives the GOP a huge plumb. It recommends that Congress provide that no county can refuse to com,pletely carry out a state's purge program. Don't be too hard on the Democrats. Their only other choice was to accept dishonest purges AND the use of the new technology to "flip" elections. Do not l;ook for Congress to adopt the panel's recommendations.