Florida's Voter Purge List Flawed

Thank goodness that the courts have ruled that Florida has to release their voter purge list.  Otherwise we wouldn't have caught this:

"Florida election officials used a flawed method to come up with a listing of people believed to be convicted felons, a list that they are recommending be used to purge voter registration rolls, state officials acknowledged yesterday. As a result, voters identifying themselves as Hispanic are almost completely absent from that list.

Of nearly 48,000 Florida residents on the felon list, only 61 are Hispanic. By contrast, more than 22,000 are African-American.

...

In a presidential-election battleground state that decided the 2000 race by giving George W. Bush a margin of only 537 votes, the effect could be significant: black voters are overwhelmingly Democratic, while Hispanics in Florida tend to vote Republican."

See the full story at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/10/national/10florida.html?hp

Other states purge voters as well, right?  Should we be focusing attention on this process in all 20 battleground states to ensure that the results in November aren't affected by illegal disenfranchisement?

•  Equal Protection of the Law

  If this is true, could it not be challenged as unconstitutional via the "Equal Protection" clause?

  by mark on Sat Jul 10, 2004 at 09:49:49 AM PDT

•  Where's the ACLU?

  If this list isn't a class action lawsuit, I don't know what is.  Talk about denial of the basic constitutional principle of one-man, one-vote, not to mention due process.  A felon purge list with 61 Hispanics and 22,000 African-Americans?  That sounds like a clear case of racial profiling to me.  Criminal.

  by erik in grayslake on Sat Jul 10, 2004 at 09:51:09 AM PDT

  •  How it happened...

    The full article explains the error as a result of requiring a match between a person's full name, birthdate, and race on the voter list and felon list before purging them from the voter rolls.  One of the lists used the racial category 'Hispanic' and another didn't, so racial matches were a lot harder to make for hispanic voters.  

    But this is either a) a case of willful manipulation of the felon purge list, or b) a case of incompetence and benign neglect with important consequences.  Either way, shouldn't we be looking into the purge lists of other states to ensure neither option happens anywhere?

    by kevincovey on Sat Jul 10, 2004 at 10:01:14 AM PDT