THOUSANDS OF ELIGIBLE VOTERS ARE ON FELON LIST

More than 2,100 Florida voters -- many of them black Democrats --
could be wrongly barred from voting in November because Tallahassee
elections officials included them on a list of felons potentially
ineligible to vote, a Herald investigation has found.

A Florida Division of Elections database lists more than 47,000 people
the department said may be ineligible to vote because of felony
records. The state is directing local elections offices to check the
list and scrub felons from voter rolls.

But a Herald review shows that at least 2,119 of those names --
including 547 in South Florida -- shouldn't be on the list because
their rights to vote were formally restored through the state's
clemency process.

That's a potentially jarring flaw, critics say, in a state that turned
the 2000 presidential election to Gov. Jeb Bush's brother George on
the narrowest of margins -- 537 votes.

Florida -- one of just six states that don't allow felons to vote --
has come under intense criticism over its botched attempts to purge
felons since the bitterly contested 2000 presidential election, when
myriad problems prompted many elections officials to ignore the purge
altogether.

The new list is causing its own problems, raising more questions about
the fairness and accuracy of the state's efforts to purge the voter
rolls of ineligible voters.

State elections officials acknowledge there may be mistakes on the
list but insist they have built in safeguards to make sure eligible
voters are not removed by local election offices. They say they have
warned election offices to be diligent before eliminating voters, and
have flagged possible cases in which voters on the list may have
regained their rights.

''We have been very clear that this database is not to be considered
the final word,'' Paul Craft, chief of the division's bureau of voting
systems, said Thursday. ``We have told the local supervisors they need
to be very careful with it.''

Increases Risks

Yet local officials, already overburdened preparing for the election,
say shifting the burden to them is opening the door for major problems.

''I have never seen such an incompetent program implemented by the
DOE,'' said Leon County elections chief Ion Sancho.

Sancho said his office has already found people in the state's felon
voter database who have received clemency.

Miami-Dade County Elections Supervisor Constance Kaplan said she, too,
intends to err on the side of voters.

''This concerns me,'' Kaplan said of The Herald's findings. ``That's
why I'm not having my staff jump to start any process until we can
make 100 percent sure that it is the correct person.''

Craft said his office continuously checks the database against a list
of felons who have received clemency -- which includes the right to
vote -- and that 10,000 felons have already been taken off the list
because of the clemency match.

Craft and other elections officials on Thursday declined to discuss
why The Herald found another 2,119 voters in the database who have
received clemency.

''We can't speculate on the methodology you used,'' Craft said. ``It
is a matter that requires further investigation.''

Close Scrutiny

Elections officials said some voters with clemency could have been
left on the list because records show they registered to vote before
their rights were restored.

Dawn Roberts, director of the Division of Elections, said the process
used to clean the voter rolls has been ''vetted at the highest levels
of the Department of Justice'' and negotiated with civil rights groups
such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP.

Those assurances offered scant consolation to Mary Catherine Lane, 51,
of Miami, who was 18 when she was arrested for robbery in 1972.

''That just makes me angry,'' Lane, a registered Democrat, said when
told she was on the list.

''I got a pardon on Dec. 14, 1998, signed by Gov. Lawton Chiles and
everything. And now they're doing this to me? I served every day of my
sentence plus some for bad behavior,'' she said.

`Don't Like It'

Norman Carter, 45, of Fort Lauderdale, also on the list, keeps his May
20, 2003, clemency papers folded in his Bible.

''I don't appreciate it, I don't like it and I wish I knew what I
could do about it,'' said Carter, a Democrat, convicted of dealing in
stolen property in 1988.

''I know how critical these elections have been lately,'' he
said.

Of the 2,119 people who obtained clemency, 62 percent are registered
Democrats, and almost half are black. Less than 20 percent are
Republican. Those ratios are very close to the same in the list of
47,000 voters who the local elections officers are supposed to review
and possibly purge from the registration rolls.

''It's just not right,'' said state Rep. Chris Smith, who represents
and lives in a Fort Lauderdale neighborhood hit hardest by the list,
the city's historic black neighborhood.

''Those who have been disenfranchised before seem to be continually
disenfranchised by our archaic laws,'' Smith said.

Were Never Told

Several of the three dozen voters on the state list interviewed by The
Herald were not aware that their rights had been restored through the
clemency process.

''I'm upset because I had clemency all these years and nobody told
me,'' said Roger Maddox, 51, a Miami Democrat who received clemency in
1977 for a 1973 theft conviction.

''Now I'm on a purge list . . . man,'' he said.

Maddox said he intends to visit the Miami-Dade elections office to get
his name removed from the list. ``Give me the number, man. This is
crazy.''

Craft said it is possible that some names are incorrectly included in
the database because the match was less then perfect when elections
officials made their comparisons.

To identify registered voters with felony convictions, the Division of
Elections compared names, birth dates, Social Security numbers and
other identifying information.

Elections officials said there are 311 voters who may have clemency
who were left on the list.

''But in each case the database is flagged so the supervisors of
elections know there was a match of some kind,'' Craft said. ``The
supervisors know automatically that those 311 potentially have clemency.''

Some Names Flagged

County elections supervisors interviewed acknowledged that some of the
names are flagged. But they wonder why it is that already overburdened
elections employees should investigate facts the state has not been
able to definitively answer itself.

Kay Clem, elections supervisor in Indian River County, said her staff
``is dealing with terms they've never heard of before. We need a lot
more training.''

Clem said her office is hiring a private company to investigate the
365 names that appear on its list.

''This is putting us in a very precarious situation,'' Clem said.

Investigate Voters

All county elections supervisors are required to investigate each
voter on the list, verify whether or not he or she is eligible to
vote, then notify by mail suspected felons who have not had their
civil rights restored.

The certified letter is supposed to name a time and place voters can
appear to explain why they should remain on the rolls.

If supervisors suspect the letters were not received, they're supposed
to publish at least one notice in the local newspaper.

If there's no response within 30 days, supervisors must remove the
person from the rolls.

No one interviewed by The Herald -- including 53-year-old Walter
Gibbons of Miami Gardens, a Vietnam veteran convicted of drug
possession in 1973 -- had yet received a letter.

''I don't think it's fair that they're trying to stop me from voting,
because everybody that commits a crime does not stay a criminal,''
said Gibbons, an ordained minister granted clemency in 1978. ``I had
my error in life, but that was a long time ago, over 30 years now, and
I'm a different person.'

Herald staff writers Debbie Cenziper, Casey Woods, Maria Herrera and
Trenton Daniel contributed to this report.