Felon Disenfranchisement: Purging the Minority Vote

The Florida Division of Elections has done an about-face and decided it will allow voting by nearly 2,500 citizens whose restored voting rights had been threatened with revocation. The former felons - many of them African American Democrats - had been wrongly included on a state list of voters to be purged.
The agency originally said that state law required former felons be deleted from the voters rolls because they had registered to vote before they received clemency. But Secretary of State Glenda Hood backtracked yesterday amidst pressure from civil liberties groups.

Florida is one of seven states that does not automatically restore civil rights to felons after they have served their prison sentences. And regaining the right to vote can be a long and difficult process.

The law caused hundreds or possibly thousands of votes to be discounted in the 2000 election because of errors in a state purge list of former felons.


Becky Steele, Director of the American Civil Liberties Union West Central Florida Office.
Joseph "Jazz" Hayden, campaign director at Unlock the Block and lead plaintiff in Hayden v. Pataki, a lawsuit challenging felon disenfranchisement statutes in New York State.
Ion Sancho, Supervisor of Elections for Leon County in Florida. He has publicly refused to purge voters based on the potential felons list.

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