Reported by Peter Franceschina, Sally Kestin, John Maines, Megan O'Matz and Dana Williams Written by Sally Kestin
More than 30,000 Florida felons who by law should have been stripped of their right to vote remain registered to cast ballots in this presidential battleground state, a Sun Sentinel investigation has found.Many are faithful voters, with at least 4,900 turning out in past elections.
Another 5,600 are not likely to vote Nov. 4 — they're still in prison.
Of the felons who registered with a party, Democrats outnumber Republicans more than two to one.
Maintaining accurate voting rolls is up to the state Division of Elections, which has failed to effectively remove felons for years.
Most recently, in 2006, the Auditor General recommended the division conduct a "comprehensive check" of all registered voters against lists of convicted felons, a step the state still has not taken, Browning acknowledged.
In response to auditors, the division said running the search "would not be a problem," but it lacked the manpower to verify possible matches. "Staff further stated that they were busy full-time" checking newly registered felons.
Once voters are added to the rolls, the state's procedure for removing them is tedious and labor-intensive. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement runs daily checks of criminal records against new voters and those who have made changes to their registrations, sending possible matches to the Elections Division.
Elections staff then manually check each one, a process that involves three to five workers reviewing records, comparing driver's license and prison photos and verifying convictions. Confirmed matches are sent to the counties for removal.
Since January 2006, more than 1.6 million new voters have registered in Florida. FDLE identified more than 124,000 possible felons.
In that time, elections workers removed about 7,200 from voter rolls statewide. Broward County took off just 232 and Palm Beach County 31.
"We do want to make sure ... that we have the right voter," Browning said.
Elections workers are now reviewing more than 3,800 possible felon voters but have more than 108,000 others still to be checked. "We've not touched those records yet," Browning said.
Asked how long it will take to review them all, he said, "I don't have a clue. I really don't."
Recently registered
John Teate, who lives west of
Boca Raton, remains on the voter rolls after registering as a Democrat in July despite felony drug and theft convictions dating to the early 1990s. He said someone he thinks was a Democratic supporter signed him up while he waited for a bus at the central terminal in downtown
Fort Lauderdale.
"I said, 'I'm a convicted felon. I can't vote,'" recalled Teate, 45. "I figured when the paperwork came in, there would be a red flag."
A spokesman for
Barack Obama's campaign said it is unlikely his volunteers signed up Teate because his name is not in a database of new voters they registered.
Teate hasn't voted and said he doesn't plan to.
It's a third-degree felony for ineligible voters to knowingly cast ballots and for campaign workers and voters to submit false registration forms. Prosecutors and elections officials in South Florida could not recall any prosecutions related to felons registering or voting in recent years.
Henderson, the Hallandale Beach voter, said he does not think his criminal record should keep him from voting.
"I paid my debt," Henderson said. "Just because I was incarcerated, that means I'm nothing now? I'm still a father. I got two kids I'm raising."
Evan Snow, a West Palm Beach Republican, agrees. Convicted of burglary, battery and other crimes dating to the 1980s, Snow said he sought clemency several years ago but was discouraged by the lengthy process and gave up.
Snow, 46, registered to vote in June. He said he plans to cast a ballot Nov. 4 but hasn't decided which presidential candidate to support.
"Everybody is getting interested in politics right now," he said. "We are all here together. Shouldn't we all be able to make a decision about who runs the place?"
To civil rights advocates, the troubled system is an argument to change the state's constitution to automatically restore voting rights to all felons who complete their sentences.
As of mid-September, about 118,000 mostly nonviolent offenders had received automatic clemency under the 2007 change. For more than 9,700 of them, it didn't matter — their names had never been removed from the voter rolls.
Why are more than 30,000 felons on Florida's voter rolls?
Vote in our poll, watch a video report, sound off on our message board and use our interactive map to find the number of felon voters in your neighborhood at
SunSentinel.com/felonvoters
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