> Glitch tells hundreds in Florida they are felons
>
> By Marcia Gelbart, Palm Beach Post Capital Bureau
> Thursday, June 22, 2000
>
> TALLAHASSEE -- With less than five months left before
> November's presidential election, hundreds of Palm Beach
> County and Treasure Coast residents came within a few
> erroneous keystrokes this week of losing their voting rights.
>
> A computer error by a Boca Raton company that has a $4
> million contract with the state Division of Elections
> mistakenly singled out thousands of Floridians -- including
> 472 in Palm Beach County and 185 from the Treasure
> Coast -- as felons in Texas and a few other states. No
> Floridian convicted of a felony can vote unless his voting
> rights are restored by the Office of Executive Clemency.
>
> Initially, 11,986 people were tagged with out-of-state felony
> convictions. But after the mishap was realized, following
> angry complaints from people erroneously identified as
> muggers, burglars and car thieves, 7,972 people were
> removed from that list.
>
> "I understand it can be a shocking thing as a citizen to say
> we've identified you as a possible felon. But we're not
> accusing anybody of anything," said Clayton Roberts,
> director of the Division of Elections. "We are legitimately
> trying to remove people from the voter rolls who shouldn't
> be voting."
>
> Martin County Elections Supervisor Peggy Robbins said her
> office has been receiving complaints about incorrect felony
> notices since early last year.
>
> "The first time was really bad. It's improved over time, but it's still
> not perfect," Robbins said.
>
> The main problem Robbins noticed was that the state sent notices to people
> with the same name as someone else who had committed a felony.
>
> In the last batch of mailings, Robbins made sure the letters encouraged
> residents to report incorrect information.
>
> "We've been much more particular in what the letters say," she said. "We
> now say 'supposedly.' "
>
> Spurred in part by cases of dead people's names being used for voting in
> Miami's 1998 elections, legislators subsequently beefed up state election
> laws to clean up voting rolls. The state hired Database Technologies, with
> headquarters on Blue Lake Drive, to analyze various computer files and
> identify people who register in more than one county, those who have died,
> or those who are felons.
>
> To do so, the company -- whose contracts with the FBI were suspended in
> 1999 because of suspected ties of the company founder to drug smugglers --
> has access to various federal, state and local agency databases, including
> those from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Other company
> contracts include processing data to help find missing children and solving
> homicides.
>
> In 1999, Database Technologies carried out the first part of its four-year
> Division of Elections contract. But mistakes soon were discovered in data
> it processed from the Florida Department of Corrections. That led state
> elections officials to ask Florida's 67 county elections supervisors to
> temporarily hold off on mailing letters that said it appeared the residents
> were felons and could not vote.
>
> That warning was later lifted, but fearful of problems, Palm Beach County
> Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore put her list in a box and kept it
> there.
>
> LePore on Wednesday said she has not sent out any letters this year and
> suggested she is likely to shun the new list as well, given the similar
> near-miss earlier. This time, the problem stemmed largely from Texas state
> records that erroneously included people with misdemeanors as having
> felonies.
>
> George Bruder, a senior vice president of Database Technologies, attributed
> the error to "a
> miscommunication," saying Texas had changed a format in its data entry. "We
> were not aware of it."
>
> The company has since ran new lists, without the misdemeanors, which were
> mailed to county
> supervisors Friday.
>
> "We spend a lot of money on a lot of things in government," said Roberts,
> the Elections Division director. "Ensuring the integrity of our voter rolls
> would seem like a high priority government
> issue."
>
> Staff writer Sarah Eisenhauer contributed to this story.
>
> marcia_gelbart at pbpost.com
>
>
> Politics are my only pleasure.
> --Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband